New Economics Foundation: 

• Four-fifths of Uber customers would use an ethical alternative – and over half would pay a higher fare to do so
• App-based companies like Uber and Deliveroo are facing multiple legal challenges relating to the treatment of their workers
• The New Economics Foundation is developing an ethical, driver-owned alternative to Uber to combat the trend toward insecure and precarious work.

New polling shows that 82% of Uber customers would likely use an alternative service with better rights for drivers.

According to the BMG poll [2] commissioned by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Left Foot Forward, 54% of Uber customers would be willing to pay more for their journey if it meant that drivers got a fairer deal.

This follows news that app-based companies like Uber and Deliveroo are facing multiple legal challenges relating to the treatment of their workers. While some workers in the gig economy say they enjoy the flexibility offered by these companies, many are campaigning for basic working rights including regular contracted hours, holiday and sick pay.

The UK’s gig economy is expanding rapidly, and a large section of the country’s workforce are already in jobs that fail to meet even basic employment rights. In London, the number of gig economy workers in the transport sector has grown by 82% since 2010, according to recent analysis of new Government data [3] by the New Economics Foundation [4].

At the same time, the number of Londoners working for companies in the conventional transport sector has dropped by 9%. This suggests an ever greater proportion of Londoners are moving into insecure and precarious work.

Recent research by the New Economics Foundation found that two in five people in the UK workforce are stuck in ‘bad jobs’ where they face insecure working conditions, are paid below the Living Wage, or both [5].

The latest findings come as the New Economics Foundation works to develop an alternative to Uber in the capital – a driver-owned platform app, provisionally called CabFair.

Stefan Baskerville, Director of Unions and Business at the New Economics Foundation, said:

These results show there is a strong demand for a more ethical alternative to Uber. The gig economy is employing more and more people, but there’s a huge imbalance of power. Customers want a fairer deal for cab drivers and many are prepared to pay a little more to ensure this.

At the New Economics Foundation we are seeking to develop a new ride-hailing app, owned by its employees and which would give a fair deal to both drivers and passengers. We want our alternative to keep transport accessible, low-cost, fast and easy for all.

We are working with trade unionists, tech partners and passengers to build something better than Uber – a driver-owned alternative that is just as convenient and competitive on price, but treats its passengers and drivers with respect.

We hope the new service will put drivers and customers firmly in control.

Josiah Mortimer, Editor of Left Foot Forward, said:

Clearly there is a huge appetite for a ride-hailing app which respects workers’ rights, and gives a fair deal to drivers. Londoners want reasonable fares – but they don’t want to throw their morals out in the process.

In the wake of Sadiq Khan’s decision to revoke Uber’s licence, this should sound the alarm for Uber to up their game when it comes to giving drivers decent pay and proper employment rights.

There’s some real competition on the way, which could be a game-changer for the industry. Rather than throwing ethics by the wayside, Uber and other ride-hailing companies should take note.

Notes to editors

1. The New Economics Foundation is the UK’s only people-powered think tank. The Foundation works to build a new economy where people really take control. www.neweconomics.org
2. Source note: BMG interviewed a representative sample of 1,509 adults living in Great Britain between 5th and 8th December. Data are weighted. BMG are members of the British polling council and abide by their rules. Full details atwww.bmgresearch.co.uk/polling. The questions asked were: ‘If there was an alternative to Uber that offered drivers greater employment rights, how likely would you be to use it?’ And ‘If there was an alternative to Uber that offered drivers greater employment rights, how likely would you be to use it, even if this meant paying higher fares?’ All respondents who answered ‘very likely’ or ‘fairly likely’ are categorised as being ‘likely’. The sample was of around 300 Uber users, with statistically significant results.
3. Data sourced from BEIS Business population estimates as published on 30th November 2017. Available at:https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2017
4. Methodology: The UK government does not directly publish figures on the size or growth of those working in the gig economy. The methodology used in these calculations has been adopted from the Brookings Institute, whereby “businesses” with no employees are used as a proxy for the gig economy: https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-the-gig-economy-new-numbers/. These “businesses” are often people who are effectively self-employed and being paid on a job-by-job basis. These figures also include those who have set up their own businesses but have not yet grown to employ staff. However, it is very unlikely that such cases could account for the dramatic increases in recent years. Analysis of similar trends in the US have found the growth of non-employer businesses tracks the adoption of platform economies in different cities.   https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-gig-economy-is-real-if-you-know-where-to-look . The calculations for London’s transport sector refer to SIC code H: Transportation and Storage. This category includes taxi services and couriers. A full list can be found here: https://www.siccode.co.uk/section/h
5. See http://neweconomics.org/2017/08/bad_jobs/

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‘As an open platform, anyone can use our platform no matter who they are, where they live, and what they believe… This is why you’ll see an extremely wide range of petitions, as they’ve all been created by people in the community.’ Ben Rattray, founder and CEO of Change.org

Steve Andrews: Uber’s huge online petition, hosted by Change.org, protested the removal of its London licence for refusal to comply with safety concerns. At first glance, the petition looked like an emphatic show of support by citizens for a cab company popular for its low fares. Yet the e-petition raises serious questions about contemporary civil society, transparency and corporate power.

Uber’s petition demonstrates how large companies can manipulate democracy through contemporary modes of political participation – and also reveals some uncomfortable contradictions in the business model of the petition platform Change.org.

Uber’s lobbying strategy

It’s first worth putting Uber’s ‘mass’ and ‘viral’ online mobilisation in context. Uber faces significant challenges in convincing people and politicians that the problems caused by the platform are worth the cheap fares and precarious jobs.

The controversy is not just about Transport for London’s concerns over safety. Problems also include the welfare of drivers without rights to sick, holiday or parental pay, and their vulnerability to being removed from the platform or pay reduced without any accountability or consultation. The long-term sustainability of the platform itself, which runs at a significant loss, is also under question – this too puts drivers’ pay and continued employment at risk.

In response to these challenges, the company has developed a wider political strategy that has given the firm a reputation for ignoring, defying or co-opting elected politicians the world over. After a ban in Germany, Uber simply carried on operating until the ban was lifted. The firm spends vast amounts of money on lobbying politicians behind closed doors.

Uber’s petition on Change.org

 

Their use of online petitions on platforms marketed as progressive is just an extension of this extensive PR and lobbying work, and it appears to be part of Uber’s standard strategy for pushing back against regulation. The company initiates petitions on its own behalf, for its own interests, either hosted on its own website or on Change.org. We found examples in numerous North American cities and states (e.g. Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Baltimore, Chicago, San Antonio, Calgary, Pennsylvania, Portland) as well as many other countries (Denmark, Spain, India).It also promotes these petitions aggressively, through its access to user data, drivers and mass marketing. Uber customers are mass emailed asking them to sign the petition, Uber drivers have been instructed to sign petitions with emails and splash screens, and app users receive notifications. Uber even promote their petitions using Google advertising space (we found these by accident when searching for information about Uber). Far from being a spontaneous ‘viral’ exercise, mass marketed and widely promoted petitions are part of a wider strategy to maintain market position.

Petitioning for profit

The corporate use of petitions already contradicts a basic premise of grassroots organising. Petitions have a long history as a mode of participation allowing ordinary people with a grievance to collectively address political actors and hold them accountable: particularly important for those without other recourse to political action. The Chartists petitioned parliament to demand the right to vote, while the petition to free Nelson Mandela from political imprisonment allowed international civil society to address South Africa’s apartheid regime.

The internet has revolutionised petitions, lowering the costs for producing and administering them, which has led to a host of mainly non-profits (eg. 38 Degrees, SumOfUs and Avaaz) as well as public platforms (such as the UK parliament’s own petition website), and a rise in the use of petitions as a mode of participation easy to engage with and cheap to administrate.

Change.org, however, also allows huge corporations a platform on the site, giving them the opportunity to orchestrate civil society methods to advance their agenda alongside the usual campaigns started by ordinary citizens. And the idea of the petition as a democratic, bottom-up tool for demanding social change is further thrown into question by Change.org’s other practices, which suit Uber’s aggressive political strategy rather well.

Unusually for a petitions website, Change.org Inc is a for-profit company rather than a charity and, following a controversial change of direction in 2012 after hosting a union-busting organisation’s petition, it became the only petitions site to stop filtering causes (apart from excluding hate speech), thus opening up the platform to anyone and everyone – including corporations and conservative organisations with a rather different agenda to those of citizens.

Yet it’s the site’s business model that must really appeal to Uber, as despite now refusing direct advertisements, Change.org allows ‘supporters’ (anyone) the opportunity to ‘chip in to help specific campaigns get seen by more people’ (‘promoted petitions’). Like Facebook advertising, promoting a petition means an increase in visibility.

Of course, ‘chipping in’ if you are a company worth $62 billion gives the corporate petition a significant advantage over the rest of us – certainly the traditional petition, where ‘going viral’ depends on the work of citizens and the level of commitment of its adherents. A lack of transparency on the part of Change.org means we can’t know just how much Uber, or any other company that might want to run a petition, has paid. This makes it hard to trust petitions and evaluate their significance.

Might a company that carries out screenings for the NHS have ‘chipped in’ to a petition asking that routine cancer screenings are carried out at a younger age? Might a building company be ‘chipping in’ to a petition on the building of more homes? While these may seem relatively benign scenarios, the point is that the platform model could give added weight to campaigns backed by corporations who happen to share a single goal with an individual – or perhaps more problematically, as could be the case with Uber, it offers them the potential to buy a successful campaign all of their own. Thanks to the opacity of the platform, we’ll never know.

Corporatising democracy

Change.org argues that these features allow a win-win situation. Its commitment to democracy, it suggests, is furthered by its openness to petitions begun by anyone. Oddly, their characterisation of petitions as set up by ‘people in the community’ includes the UK head of Uber Tom Elvidge, who initiated the London petition.

More insight into Change.org Inc’s vision comes from further statements of its CEO Ben Rattray, in the context of having raised $25 million after a funding round (investors were largely drawn from the tech sector, perhaps drawn to Change.org’s access to rich user data (see their privacy policy). He said: ‘This investment is recognition that there’s an opportunity to democratise democracy in the same way that we’ve democratised everything from media and communications to commerce to, increasingly, transportation… It’s about lowering the barriers to entry in industries that traditionally are difficult to participate in.’

This is quite a novel understanding of democracy. Rattray’s vision of democracy appears to refer to a new company’s right to corporate advantage in an ‘industry that is difficult to participate in’ (ie. regulated), and extends citizenship to corporate actors. In the case of Uber, the ‘democracy’ also comes from the company using its own drivers and customers as proxy voters against regulators in theory answerable to an entire population.

The Uber London ban and petition is part of a shift in the way transportation is organised, one that may not, as the evidence suggests, be sustainable. Yet it seems clear Uber will continue to fight legislation here and all over the world to guarantee its investors a return. There is potential for innovation around ‘sharing’ to use resources and deliver services in a way that is more responsive to our needs and more accountable to workers and consumers – but this isn’t it.

The petition controversy highlights another attempted shift: to radically change the meaning of civil society and the traditional tools of citizen participation by ‘opening them up’, ‘democratising’ them – to businesses. The growth of online civil society platforms can empower people who otherwise don’t have a voice in democracies largely unaccountable to their populations. However, the Uber Change.org petition suggests they can further entrench corporate power, ensuring that here, as elsewhere in contemporary democracies, businesses will enjoy huge advantages over ordinary people.

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