In June 2017, a group of seven Uber drivers in South Africa successfully won a court case which classified them as Uber employees. Their grievances were typical of those trying to make a living in the gig economy: poor working conditions and pay, high costs, and the fact that all seven of them had been recently deactivated from the platform without any explanation. But in January 2018, that decision was overturned: a judge in South Africa’s Labour Court found that the drivers were technically employed by Uber in the Netherlands (where Uber is headquartered), and that therefore they should have lodged their case there instead.
In London, two former Uber drivers, Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar, have been engaged in an ongoing court case about the very same issues since 2016. Aslam and Farrar were able to get the very same point – that they were technically employed by Uber in the Netherlands – thrown out, because they had never been drivers there. Aslam went on to found the United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD), a trade union for app-based drivers. “I wish we’d known the drivers in South Africa then,” says Aslam. ”We would have shared our legal documents, talked to them about our defence, we might have been able to help.”
Ever since a global strike of Uber drivers in May 2019, drivers for app-based companies - think Uber, Lyft, and their growing competitors like Ola and Grab – have been trying to find a way of organising internationally. With the help of funding from the Open Society Foundations, a charity based in the UK, Aslam and a group of other drivers from the UPHD and IWGB (Independent Workers of Great Britain, another union) pulled together a conference with attendees from over 23 countries around the world.
They all met in Thame, Oxfordshire, over two days in January, in what was labelled the first-ever conference of the International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers (IAATW). Transport workers from Chile to India gathered to share best practices, information, and stories about how they had been taking on Uber, Lyft, Ola and others. For the IAATW, the underlying logic is that Uber, and its competitors, are global behemoths operating around the world. And for gig economy unions, that means organising globally too.
“A few years ago, when I started meeting up with drivers – I would meet drivers in South Africa, India, and people were often saying that this work will fracture people and isolate them,” says Jamie Woodcock, a researcher at the Open University who is working on a book about the gig economy. “But these companies have created a new global workforce, that has shared concerns.”
At the conference, workers spent a lot of their time sharing their stories – how they started working for app-based companies, what costs they had taken on in order to do so, and how they had gotten involved in labour organising. They took part in workshops – such as one from Biju Mathew, an organiser at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, about the cooperation between taxi workers and app-based workers in New York. And they shared tools to better organise locally.
Nicole Moore, from Los Angeles-based Rideshare Drivers United, talked about an app she created which brought together drivers from Lyft and Uber. Users can be connected with an organiser and talk through organising efforts by other drivers. That app could be adapted by enterprising drivers in other countries – all they need is experienced organisers willing to put aside some time to share their expertise, Moore said.
One of the main aims of the conference was the creation of a manifesto, something that workers could take back to their countries as a basis for organising. In countries like India, and cities like New York, the number of unions and drivers associations has sometimes made it difficult to present a united front against global corporations.
“The manifesto is the minimum platform which the organisations can come together to agree on,” says Carlos Ramos, a driver with Gig Workers Rising, an American drivers association. “The key areas of collaboration are national solidarity, information-sharing, and capacity building and training.”
The manifesto, which will be finished by the end of February, had to be broad enough that rickshaw drivers in India and Uber drivers in Philadelphia could both use it, but it also had to feature concrete demands. One such measure in the draft manifesto is the right to a Universal Labour Guarantee, a concept which asserts that all workers should have access to fundamental workers’ rights (such as the ability to join a union) and an “adequate living wage”, regardless of their employment status.
Read more: What is the gig economy and why is it so controversial?
“This is a global problem that each association has been trying to solve locally,” says Federico Dottori, president of drivers association ACUA Chile. In countries like the UK and the US, drivers have waged legislative battles over how workers are classified. In Chile, legislation currently under debate might freeze registrations for Uber – and other ride-hailing apps like Didi and Cabify – so that these platforms won’t be able to rely on a constant flow of workers, enabling them to push down their rates. Other regulation in Chile could also introduce a base rate for drivers, something which recent legislation in California and New York has tried to introduce.
The IAATW says that some “workplace” issues are specific to working for an app, and therefore cannot be addressed adequately by traditional unions. These issues are wide-ranging: app-workers can’t raise grievances with a manager because they don’t have one, there’s no sick leave in the case of injury, and employers may operate in a regulatory grey zone where they can get away with paying less than the minimum wage. On the other hand, working for an app also provides workers with other tools of resistance.
Under EU law, such as GDPR, any individual can request the data that is collected on them by a platform or website. Farrar and Aslam say that drivers can use this method to fight back against unfair deactivations. They think that pooling together their data will enable workers to gain a better picture of how these apps actually work – for example, if a certain amount of ratings below five stars automatically leads to deactivation, or if surge pricing that should benefit workers during busy times is actually passed on. In New York, the NY Taxi and Limousine Commission collected this kind of information from Uber, Lyft, and Juno – which they then used to impose a cap on driver registrations, as well as a wage floor of $17.22 (£13.29) in 2018, after finding that 96 per cent of workers for those companies made below minimum wage.
Part of the problem with organising against a global company – particularly ones which have already demonstrated a willingness to mount costly legal battles – is that legislation itself might not be that useful. Dottori admits he’s cautiously optimistic about the legislation in Chile.
“It’s important, but Uber doesn’t generally comply with the law.” Case in point: AB-5, a California bill which classifies workers for Uber as employees, was hailed as a huge win. But Uber has been testing out changes in the app which would make the firm technically comply with AB-5 by letting drivers bid on the wage that they want to receive for each ride. Critics say this would only make drivers compete with each other, racing to the bottom in order to find as many rides as possible.
“One of the major victories of these companies has been to convince people that they’re unregulatable – and [now] we’re starting to see that change,” says Woodcock. “AB-5 has been very inspiring because it demonstrates that there are actually significant political steps which can be taken.”
Next on the list is finalising the draft manifesto, which attendees of the conference are still reviewing with their unions and associations at home. An interim committee has been set up – with representatives who attended the conference, from the UK, South Africa, Los Angeles and New York – to decide what practical steps workers can take to support each other. Aslam mentions that there are plans for four forthcoming actions (although he won’t specify what three of them are), including a global strike with all kinds of app-based transport workers.
In order for the IAATW to make a serious dent, however, organisers and drivers will have to go further than protest. But workers at the conference were aware that victories like AB-5 are hard-won. They don’t expect things to change overnight, and are prepared to keep meeting for as long as it takes for their conditions to improve.
“Everyone was sitting down face to face, sharing their struggles, sharing their triumphs, finding common ground,” says Ramos. “We’re setting the framework for what could be a very powerful arm of the labour movement.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
