The company lured drivers to the developing country with lucrative subsidies, then undermined those workers with policies that made their jobs more dangerous, documents in newly discovered Uber files show
July 11, 2022 at 7:00 am EDT (Illustration by Lucy Naland/Washington Post, Samantha Reinders for The Washington Post, Morne De Klerk/Getty, Uber screenshots, iStock) Comment on this story Comment Cape Town, South Africa — He’s been a policeman, a factory worker and a taxi driver, but at 44, Shaun Cupido had yet to find a path to prosperity. Murderous gangs ruled Manenberg, the apartheid-built town where he had spent his entire life, and he was sick of having to remind his three children to lie down and cover their heads every time they heard bullets. Then in 2017, Cupido found a job that he believed could finally turn his fortunes around. Uber promised to let South Africans make their own hours and be their own bosses. He rented a car, began ferrying tourists to Cape Town’s waterfront shopping districts and cliff-side resorts, and for a while the money was good. He began to dream of building his own business with a fleet of cars for the transport company. But slowly, he said, Uber made changes to its service that lowered his pay and increased his risks. The company recruited new drivers to the city, flooding the streets with competitors and halving Cupido’s daily customer base. Trying to catch up, he logged 12-hour days and began driving the vast slums of the Cape Flats, where many drivers were afraid to go. “Hustling,” as he called it, became even riskier after Uber began letting passengers in South Africa pay in cash as part of an effort to boost ridership. Cupido heard of drivers being robbed and attacked, but he trusted his instincts about the danger. He folded a stack of bills into his wallet and continued to work long hours, unaware that he was walking straight into an ambush. In its quest to disrupt global transportation and make its investors rich, Uber has sold drivers like Cupido on a vision of upward mobility. Years later, some drivers say they are worse off than when they started because Uber made policy decisions that robbed them of their ability to earn a living and increased the risks of driving in some parts of the world. The Uber files are a rare glimpse into Uber’s years of internal deliberations made possible by more than 124,000 files obtained by the Guardian and shared with more than 40 news organizations, including the Washington Post. The joint survey, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, provides insight into how the company viewed its drivers. Read evidence from the Uber records investigation Emails, presentations and text messages from 2013 to 2017 show Uber executives, led by then-CEO Travis Kalanick, executing a business plan that turned out to be gradually undermining their own drivers. Top executives advised local managers around the world to spend millions of dollars on lucrative incentives for new drivers and then steadily increase Uber’s commission, depriving those drivers of income and increasing money flowing to Uber, the documents show . Publicly, Uber reiterated a message that its service empowered people to become “entrepreneurs.” In private email exchanges, company officials referred to drivers as a mass of “supply” whose low pay and minimal job protections were necessary for Uber to win. The documents, obtained along with interviews with four former Uber managers and 20 current and former drivers, show that Uber created working conditions it knew would lead to many drivers barely breaking even. The documents and interviews show that Uber encouraged more drivers to sign up than necessary, slashed drivers’ earnings and created a system that rewarded workers for routes and schedules that put them at risk of harm in violence-plagued locations . In written responses to questions from The Post, Uber spokesman Gus Glover said drivers have found good financial opportunities using its app, even as their earnings fluctuate “as a normal part of doing business.” Because drivers can freely choose to work for different app-based services, Glover said, “it’s fundamental that we try to create conditions to keep drivers on the platform.” Glover did not respond to questions about Cupido or any of the specific information contained in the Uber Files. In a statement, Devon Spurgeon, a spokeswoman for Kalanick, said the Uber co-founder helped pioneer a new business model. “To do this required a change in the status quo, as Uber became a serious competitor in an industry where competition has historically been outlawed,” Spurgeon said. “As a natural and predictable result, entrenched industry interests around the world have fought to prevent much-needed growth in the transportation industry.” He did not respond to questions about Uber’s treatment of drivers, its operations in South Africa or the spread of cash payments. The challenges for drivers are particularly acute in countries like South Africa, where extreme levels of unemployment and inequality give Uber access to a deep pool of workers willing to endure challenging work with few benefits. One in three South Africans of working age is unemployed — the highest unemployment rate in the world among countries tracked by the World Bank. “The vast majority of workers cannot leave and go to another job because there is no other job,” said Darcy du Toit, a lawyer and emeritus professor at the University of the Western Cape who researches working conditions in the digital economy. and helped a group of drivers challenge Uber over workers’ rights in a South African court. Uber says it now has 20,000 drivers across South Africa, including delivery drivers for Uber Eats. Some say they struggle to make minimum wage, it now equates to about $1.40 an hour, after sharing a portion of their earnings with Uber and rental car companies and paying for expenses like gas. Some say they have been robbed by criminals, suffered during periodic government crackdowns on Uber and targeted by rival taxi operators who attack drivers to defend their turf. In 2016 and 2017, Uber drivers in South Africa were burned when their cars were set on fire, both men victims of suspected attacks by taxi companies, according to news reports. One reportedly died of his injuries. “The Uber platform has become a platform of crime, a platform of fear,” said Derick Ongansie, 66, a former Uber driver who helped organize driver protests and one of the drivers who launched a legal challenge against the company. “Once you get into that vehicle, you’re either afraid of the traffic cop pulling you over and impounding you, or you’re afraid of the criminal.” South Africa is one of the violent crime capitals of the world, and workers in its volatile transport sector were targets of theft and violence long before Uber arrived in the country. The Post found no evidence that Uber caused an increase in crime in South Africa. But the company’s policy decisions, such as enabling cash payments after previously rejecting the idea as less safe, have exposed some workers — including many first-time drivers — to a level of risk they say they had not envisioned. Stephan Swart, former manager of Uber in South Africa, who says he was informed of internal management decisions about Drivers from 2015 to 2018, it said Uber knew that requiring drivers to carry cash would make them more vulnerable to robbery. Uber developed the policy anyway, he said, because managers believed it would appeal to millions of South Africans who didn’t have credit or debit cards, boosting rides in the country by up to 30 percent and helping Uber compete with other forms of transportation. like traditional taxis, which accept cash. Uber did not respond to Swart’s claim, but said the company has taken steps to improve driver safety in South Africa, including the ability to reject cash transactions, more upfront in-app information about passenger destinations and a button that drivers can tap to call emergency safety services. “Safety is and always has been a top priority for us, and we’ve invested heavily over the years in technology to help keep drivers and riders safe,” Frans Hiemstra, Uber’s general manager for sub-Saharan Africa, said in a statement. sent by email. One evening in 2019, Cupido was carrying about 700 South African rand, or about $50, when his phone buzzed with the name of his next passenger: Nadine. Two men got into his car, saying their friend Nadine had ordered the ride. After a short ride, an argument ensued and one of the passengers hit him repeatedly on the head with the handle of a knife. With blood running down his face, Cupido escaped from the car and collapsed in the yard of a woman who saw him and called for help. The two men left in his rental car. Lying in a hospital bed with stitches in his head, Cupido realized he was too scared to drive for a living again. He spent a month recovering from his attack, then took the first job he could find, working the graveyard shift at a downtown factory. “I just lost everything,” he said. Uber, despite promising to help, refused to even pay for the glasses Cupido broke during the attack, she said. The company declined to answer questions about the incident, but said all Uber drivers in South Africa are covered by its insurance plan, which compensates drivers for emergency medical treatments and lost earnings. The Washington Post’s Douglas MacMillan on how Uber undermined drivers in South Africa with policies that made the jobs more dangerous. (Video: Douglas MacMillan, Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) When Uber came to South Africa in 2013, nearly two decades after the end of apartheid, it entered a society still…
