The company Uber yesterday Sunday found itself at the centre of a scandal after a huge investigation by journalists who accused it of previously "breaking the law" and using violent methods to impose itself on the market, despite the reservations of politicians and taxi companies.
"We have not excused and do not seek excuses for behaviors that are inconsistent with our current principles as a company," Jill Hazelbaker, Uber's vice president of marketing and public relations, noted in a statement. "We are asking the public to judge us by what we have done in the last five years and what we will do in the next," she added."
The UK's Guardian newspaper obtained from an anonymous source and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its 42 media partners some 124.000 documents dating from 2013 to 2017, including text messages and emails from Uber executives as well as presentations, notes and invoices.
Yesterday Sunday, several media outlets around the world (including the Washington Post, Le Monde and the BBC) published their first articles on the scandal based on the Uber Files.
In them they present some of Uber's practices during the years of the company's rapid expansion, but also during a period when it was at the centre of many controversies, especially with taxi companies in cities from Paris to Johannesburg.
"The company broke the law, misled police and regulators, exploited violence against its drivers and secretly lobbied governments around the world," the Guardian article says in its introduction.
"Safety switch"
The articles refer mainly to messages from Travis Kalanick, then head of the San Francisco-based company, when executives expressed concern about the risks Uber drivers who were encouraged to participate in a demonstration in Paris might face. "I think it's very worth it," the company's co-founder replied. "Violence guarantees success."
According to the Guardian, Uber has adopted similar tactics in several European countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy...), mobilizing its drivers and urging them to protest to the police when they were victims of attacks, with the aim of the company exploiting media coverage to extract concessions from the authorities.
"Kalanick never implied that Uber was exploiting violence at the expense of driver safety," Devon Spurgeon, a spokesman for the former company chief, responded in a statement released by ICIJ.
After accusations against him of encouraging controversial and violent practices by company leaders against a backdrop of sexism and workplace harassment, Kalanick was forced to step down as general manager in June 2017.
When he announced his resignation from Uber's board in late 2019, he said he was "proud of what the company has accomplished." His spokesman yesterday dismissed all of the newspapers' allegations, including that of obstruction of justice.
According to the newspapers, Uber had adopted various strategies to avoid attempts by law enforcement to intervene, including that of a "security switch" that consisted of immediately cutting off an office's access to internet databases in the event of an investigation.
"Outside the law"
The Guardian quotes several excerpts of conversations between executives in which they comment that there is no legal framework for Uber's activities.
"Sometimes we have problems because we are completely outside the law," Uber's communications director Nairi Hurdazian wrote to colleagues in 2014, when the company's existence in Thailand and India was threatened.
Uber initially had to fight a battle to gain consumer acceptance. The company flirted with consumers and drivers and found allies in power, including Emmanuel Macron during his time as economy minister (2014-16), who reportedly helped the company subtly.
Based on the testimonies of several individuals and documents, including several text messages exchanged, Le Monde concluded that a secret "deal" had been struck between Uber and Macron at Bercy (the French ministry). The French newspaper refers to meetings in the minister's office and numerous discussions (in private appointments, during phone calls or via SMS) between Uber and Macron or his advisers, based mainly on the accounts of these contacts, drawn up by lobbyist Marc McGahn.
At the time when the current chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, was mayor of Hamburg, he opposed Uber lobbyists and insisted on paying drivers a minimum wage, leading one of the company's executives to describe him as a "real comedian". Joe Biden, as vice president of the US at the time, was delayed in a meeting with the company at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Referring to the incident, Kalanick noted to a colleague that "I had my people let him know that every minute he's late is one less minute he has with me." After the meeting, Biden appears to have modified his prepared speech in Davos to make a reference to a CEO whose company would give millions of workers "the freedom to work as many hours as they wish and manage their lives as they wish."
A spokesperson for Kalanick said the transportation giant's expansion initiatives were "guided by more than a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber's strong legal, policy and compliance teams."
At the same time, Uber offered its shares to political figures in Russia and Germany and paid researchers "hundreds of thousands of dollars to publish research on the benefits of its economic model," the British newspaper said.
In yesterday's statement, Uber recalled that the media had adequately covered the company's "mistakes" before 2017. "Today Uber (...) is an integral part of the daily lives of 100 million people," Hazelbecker said. "We have moved from an era of confrontation to an era of cooperation."
Source: protothema.gr
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