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  • cuavas@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    Uber is a scummy company with a history of scandals. Here’s a list from a few years ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-company-scandals-and-controversies-2017-11?op=1

    Their whole business model is to operate a taxi service while claiming it isn’t a taxi service, to avoid following regulations for taxi services. In cities where they’ve been been forced to follow regulations, they’ve lost their licenses to operate multiple times. For example:

    • Lost license to operate in London in 2017 and 2019: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50544283
    • Can’t find a link at the moment, but they lost their license to operate in Việt Nam entirely for tax evasion and improper business registration

    Uber under-pays drivers. With the rates they pay, driving for Uber is effectively a reverse mortage on your car. They prey on vulnerable people. Businesses that can’t pay a living wage shouldn’t exist. Remember FDR:

    No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.

    By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.

    (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)

    Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.

    (1938, Fireside Chat, the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards Act)

    I haven’t actively looked into GoGet’s dealings, but they don’t have the same history of well-known scandals that Uber has.

      • cuavas@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, ironic that the USA, which produced FDR, is now producing all these “gig economy” companies that rely on mistreating employees, and also allows underpaying staff expected to make it up in tips. Vulture capitalism for the win, baby! Ever since Reagan at least.