Uber Screws Its Drivers Again

The Gypsy cab company has been showing its drivers a lower fare than it charges its passengers, which means that the drivers have been deliberately deceived on their percentage of the fare.

This is not a surprise:  Screwing their employees is at the core of their business plan, even though they still have no possible path to profitability.

Their excuse?  "Prop 22 made me do it," which is kind of ironic, considering that Uber quite literally bought that law's way onto the ballot, and then spent hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the Californian electorate in order to keep screwing their workers:

Uber Technologies Inc. acknowledged Friday it had been showing drivers lower fares than what riders actually paid and promised to change the practice, which it attributed to a California law the company spent tens of millions of dollars to support.

Uber made the change after San Francisco news site Mission Local reported that drivers in the city were consistently shown a lower fare than what riders are actually paying, raising issues of transparency for drivers who want to know how much of a cut Uber takes from each ride.

Uber is sorry that they got caught, not that they defrauded their drivers.

………

Uber, Lyft Inc. and other gig companies spent more than $200 million to support Proposition 22, which promised certain new benefits to drivers in order to bypass a state law that required them to treat drivers as employees instead of independent contractors. Uber is passing on the costs of those new benefits — which include guaranteed earnings equivalent to 120% of the minimum wage during drivers’ engaged or booked time, health stipends for some drivers, and more — to riders, which is why they see a higher price for the ride than drivers do, [Uber Spokesman Matthew] Wing said.

“On the driver receipts they were not being shown those fees,” Wing said. “They were just being shown the amount of the fare that they were getting a cut from.”

And Uber would never play games with those fees to screw their drivers, right?

If you believe that, I have some swamp land in Arizona to sell you.

Uber will start showing the same information to riders and drivers starting next week, he said.

Advocacy group Gig Workers Rising on Friday scoffed at Uber’s explanation. “If this discrepancy was truly just about the Prop 22 ‘benefits fee,’ why refuse transparency?” said Lauren Casey, lead organizer at Gig Workers Rising.

………

Uber and Lyft say they have already paid out millions of dollars in guaranteed earnings and health-care stipends since Proposition 22 was passed last year. Wing explained that the rates riders see are what they agree to pay for the ride, but drivers’ pay is determined by factors beyond base rate and distance like how long a ride takes, which can vary.

It's complicated = "F%$# you, I'm keeping it all".

The Mission Local story includes questions about Uber’s take rate — what percentage of a ride’s cost the company is getting versus how much drivers are earning. Uber has said its take rate is about 25%, but according to calculations by that story’s reporter, the drivers’ average take rate was about 56%, meaning the company’s take rate averaged about 44%.

How is this not fraud?

Neither Uber of Lyft have a path to profitability.  Their business model is neither technically difficult or protected by IP.

All they have going for them is massive amounts of VC money to subsidize their money-losing expansion, and the only way that the money keeps flowing is if they show that they are "serious", which is defined by venture capitalists as f%$#ing their workers like a drunk sorority girl.

It is an indictment of US style crony capitalism.