“We were disconnected in a barbaric way, all they said was “fraudulent document”: Uber Eats deactivates the accounts of 2,500 illegal immigrants (Update)

10/01/22

You may not know it, but Uber has just closed a factory in France and laid off 2,500 people. Well, not quite, but it’s just like: in recent weeks, the “Eats” subsidiary of the American firm has deactivated the accounts of more than 2,500 undocumented workers suspected of being fraudulent. They find themselves without work and without compensation. If they had been salaried, they would have been fired. But Uber has imposed since its arrival in France in 2011 the use of independents for more “flexibility”, erecting the sacrosanct “disruption” as a model for the future. So that’s what “disruption” and “flexibility” mean in their world: it’s the freedom to be able to break the contracts of 2,500 delivery people, without notice, without a redundancy plan and without having to explain it.

Release

09/12/22

The demonstrators, all Africans, marched between Place de la République and the French headquarters of the specialist in home meal delivery. “Uber thieves”, “angry delivery men”, “justice for delivery people”they chanted.

“We got disconnected in a barbaric way, all they said was ‘fraudulent document’”deplores an Ivorian delivery man who prefers to remain anonymous and who has a 99% satisfaction rate on the application after one year of delivery for Uber Eats.

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“They knew very well”

All the deliverers interviewed admit having used identity papers not belonging to them to create their profile but criticize Uber’s hypocrisy.

“For three years I worked like that for them”, Ismaël Meïté, a 32-year-old undocumented Ivorian, is indignant. “They knew very well that the identity document and the profile photo were not identical but that was not a problem. During the Covid we worked a lot and now they say we are not compliant?he complains.

Uber Eats assures that each delivery person has been informed of the reason for their deactivation and that there is the possibility of an appeal, which none of the delivery people interviewed at the demonstration confirmed. Uber also said it reactivated 3.8% of disconnected accounts after reviewing some specific cases.

A group of more than 700 couriers has been created on Telegram to ask Uber to regularize the situation of couriers who have been banned.

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