A rocky ride for an app on the rise
For a few weeks last winter, Uber seemed to be lurching forward rather than growing up. At the end of a year that saw the company sextuple in size, CEO Travis Kalanick cited rapid expansion as a cause for growing pains. Whatever the cause, seeing Uber totter under the weight of its missteps was like watching a PSA on how not to manage an aggressive tech company expansion. There are other, ongoing criticisms: for instance, that Uber and other on-demand mobile services are contributing to the rise of precarious employment. Driver strife Labour lawyers have taken ridebooking companies to court over the practice of treating drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, and unhappy drivers have gone on strike in multiple cities. (Happy drivers, of course, don’t make headlines.) Uber says it is creating thousands of flexible jobs; critics say Uber, Lyft and similar services are driving an economy built on temporary, unstable, and benefits-free employment. One judge noted that 20th-century labour laws are “woefully outdated” in addressing 21st-century markets. Safety On Wednesday, a local Uber driver was arrested and accused of sexually assaulting a passenger in Vaughan. A driver in New Delhi was charged with raping a female rider in December. That victim is suing the company in the U.S., claiming safety checks were lax. For a business model based on trusting strangers, violent crime is a dealbreaker. Uber’s head of global safety, Phillip Cardenas — formerly of Airbnb — vowed improvements and implemented safety upgrades, including incident response teams. Privacy In November, a Buzzfeed journalist reported that a top Uber NYC executive had cheerily described “tracking” the journalist’s ride to the company’s headquarters. Earlier that year, the company suffered a large data breach. When companies collect data on customers’ every move and purchase, privacy is paramount. Uber enlisted external experts to review its privacy policies and rolled out improvements. Media relations Buzzfeed also reported in November that another executive discussed digging up dirt on a journalist who had been critical of the company. The remarks sparked censure from Kalanick, but not before the press branded Uber as villainous. Soon after, Kalanick blogged that aside from financial growth, “we also need to invest in internal growth and change.” Surge pricing During the hostage crisis at a café in Sydney in December, Uber riders reported they were charged four times the usual fare. “Surge pricing” is automated and meant to attract more drivers to areas of high demand, the company said, but the move looked like callous gouging, not exactly strengthening Uber’s community-building image. Uber refunded the fares and apologized. Regulatory trampling Running roughshod over regulatory systems is less of a bug in Uber’s business model and more of a permanent feature. Even some outside the company say that taxi licensing systems are outdated and ripe for disruption. Nevertheless, in the same post that addressed internal growth, Kalanick wrote that Uber would become a “smarter and more humble” company that “gives back more to the cities we serve.” Kate Allen