Uber fined after ‘robo-firing’ drivers

A court in Amsterdam has ruled that Uber failed to comply with a court order when an algorithm made the decision to dismiss two drivers from the UK and Portugal.

The District Court of Amsterdam ordered Uber to pay €584,000 in penalty payments to the fired drivers, with €4,000 accruing for each additional day of non-compliance.

The court order against Uber was made in April 2023 by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, and required the taxi and delivery company to provide transparency in how it used automation to make decisions to workers affected by them.

The case was brought by Worker Info Exchange (WIE), supporting the UK’s App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU).

Uber argued that it should not give the workers more information about the decision to dismiss them in order to protect trade secrets. It said the drivers’ accounts had been flagged due to “very specific circumstances” and that the decisions were reviewed by human teams.

However, the court said the human review of the ‘robo-firing’ decision was nothing more than a “symbolic act”.

In her ruling, Judge Dudok van Heel said: “It cannot be said that the failure to comply with the order is not serious… It may also be the case that Uber is deliberately trying to withhold certain information because it does not want to give an insight into its business and revenue model.”

She added that the uncapped penalty payments were “not considered disproportionate”, arguing that they would provide sufficient incentive for Uber to comply with the order.

James Farrar, director of the Worker Info Exchange and the claimant who brought the landmark Supreme Court case against the company in 2021 that ruled Uber drivers to be workers – and therefore due basic rights – said the company “habitually flouts the law and defies the orders of even the most senior courts”.

He added: “Uber drivers and couriers are exhausted by years of merciless algorithmic exploitation at work and grinding litigation to achieve some semblance of justice while government and local regulators sit back and do nothing to enforce the rules.

“Instead, the UK government is busy dismantling the few protections workers do have against automated decision-making in the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill currently before Parliament.

“Similarly, the proposed EU Platform Work Directive will be a pointless paper tiger unless governments get serious about enforcing the rules.”

Anton Ekker, of Ekker Law, represented the drivers. He said: “Drivers have been fighting for their right to information on automated deactivations for several years now.

“The Amsterdam Court of Appeal confirmed this right in its principled judgment of 4 April 2023. It is highly objectionable that Uber has so far refused to comply with the Court’s order. However, it is my belief that the principle of transparency will ultimately prevail.”

Under the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, protections from automated decision-making and access to information on algorithms will be watered down, unions argue.

In 2021, Spain passed a landmark gig economy law that gives unions the right to access algorithms used by their employers to manage their workforce.

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