San Francisco: Cache leaked from a secret file from a company sharing Uber’s trip described the doubtful and potentially illegal ethical tactics that it used to trigger a frenetic global expansion from almost a decade ago, a media investigation together showed Sunday.
Nicknamed “Uber file,” an investigation involving dozens of news organizations found that company officials took advantage of strong reactions that sometimes from the taxi industry to the driver to gather support and avoid the authority of the regulation because it seems to be conquering the new market at the beginning of its history.
Expelled from 124,000 documents from 2013-2017 which was originally obtained by the Daily British The Guardian and shared with the International Investigation Journalist Consortium, the revelation was the latest hit for a company that was jammed by controversy when it exploded into a disturbing force in local transportation.
The cache includes the exchange of unnamed text and e-mail between the executive, stand out from the co-founder and former executive head of Travis Kalanick, who was forced to resign in 2017 after allegations of brutal management practices and several episodes of sexual and psychological harassment in the company.
The success of violence guarantees,” Kalanick sent a message to the leaders of other companies when he encouraged a back protest in the midst of demonstrations that were sometimes hot in Paris in 2016 against the arrival of Uber in the market.
Uber’s rapid expansion relied on subsidized drivers and discounts on tariffs that underestimate the taxi industry, and “often without looking for licenses to operate as taxi and livery services,” reports the Washington Post, one of the media outlets involved in the investigation.
Drivers throughout Europe face violent retaliation because taxi drivers feel their livelihoods are threatened. The investigation found that “In some cases, when the driver was attacked, the Uber executive spinned quickly to use” to seek public support and regulations, the post said.
According to The Guardian, Uber has adopted similar tactics in European countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, mobilizing drivers and encouraging them to complain to the police when they become victims of violence, to use media coverage to get concessions from authority.
A spokesman Kalanick strongly denied the findings as “a fake agenda,” saying he “never suggested that Uber must take advantage of violence at the expense of the driver’s safety.”
However, Uber blamed Sundays for the previous “mistakes” made by leadership under Kalanick.
We have moved from the era of confrontation to one of the collaboration, showing willingness to come to the table and find a joint foundation with former opponents, including trade unions and taxi companies,” he said, noting that his successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, “was assigned to change every aspect of how Uber operates. “
‘Killing Turning’
Investigations also found that Uber works to avoid regulatory probes by utilizing technological excellence, writing Post.
This illustrates an example when Kalanick applies a “kill switch” to cut off device access from a distance in the Amsterdam office to the Uber internal system during the raid by the authorities.
Please press The Kill Switch Smoke,” he wrote in an email to an employee. “Access must be closed at AMS (Amsterdam).”
Spokesman Kalanick Devon Spurgeon said the former executive head “never allowed actions or programs that would hinder justice in any country.”
Kalanick “does not create, direct or oversee this system which was established by the Department of Law and Compliance and was never charged in any jurisdiction to obstruct justice or related violations,” he said.
The investigation accused that Uber’s actions were against the law and that the executives were aware, quoting a joke that they had become “pirates.”
The reports said the files revealed that Uber also lobbied the government to help expand, found specifically the Allies at Emmanuel Macron France, who was the Minister of Economics from 2014 to 2016 and now the president of the country.
The company believes Macron will encourage regulators “to ‘lack of conservative’ in the interpretation of their rules that limit the company’s operations,” the post said.
Macron is an open supporter of Uber and the idea of changing France into a “beginner country” in general, but a leaked document shows that the support of ministers even sometimes clashes with left government policy.
Disclosure triggers anger among the left politicians, who condemned Uber-Macron’s relationship as fighting “all our rules, all our social rights and to the rights of workers,” and condemn “the looting of the state.”