On Thursday, August 12, Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice certified a class-action lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc.
Judge Justin Paul Perell released his decision late on August 12. The decision stems from a court filing made by Samfiru Tumarkin LLP and Uber Eats courier David Heller in 2017.
Read MoreTruework, the income verification API that powers over 15,000 lending institutions, today announced it has launched Credentials, a new technology that expands verification coverage beyond their instant network of 35 million employees. Credentials will allow the growing population of 1099 and other hard-to-reach employees to share their employment and income data with verifiers when instant verifications aren’t possible.
Read MoreThe Ontario government has released the 2021 Ontario Highways Program, an online resource that provides information on highway investments and projects that are planned and underway. “This information allows people to see highway projects that are being built or planned
Read MoreLos Angeles (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Drivers for Uber and Lyft are staging strikes in cities across the United States, urging the U.S. Congress to grant gig workers the right to band together and push for better wages and working conditions.
Protests in the United States come as Ontario’s Workforce Advisory Committee is consulting with citizens on “the future of work in Ontario.” The online consultation closes on July 31st, and is expected to result in new legislation affecting gig economy workers and others in the province.
Read MoreHowever, as of July 1st 2021, Uber Canada will be located in Canada. Up until now, its head offices have been located in the Netherlands, a situation which has allowed it to avoid paying many of the same taxes competing Canadian business are required by law to pay. Uber’s “Double Dutch” tax avoidance strategy has been well investigated in other articles which are well worth reading.
Less well investigated is what we might call Uber’s “Lawsuit Avoidance Strategy,” which up until now could be summarized as: “Hide in the Netherlands and make anyone who wants to sue you, for any reason large or small, fly to Europe and find you in order to get their day at the Hague.”
Read MoreAs a result of losing its case before the Supreme Court of Canada in March of 2021, Uber Canada has decided to move its Canadian head office to Canada from the Netherlands, where it has been located for years as part of a complicated web of entities and transactions which have allowed it to avoid taxes and lawsuits.
Read MoreHow much does Uber want to eliminate its drivers?
Even UberEats, the only division of Uber that’s ever gotten close to making a profit, is testing out delivery robots: Geoffrey the Delivery Robot has apparently been launched and was spotted on the streets of Toronto on June 22nd.
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Taxi News was not able to locate the photographer who took this picture in order to give photo credit. It’s an almost perfect visual metaphor for service consumers and providers in the gig economy.
“Finally someone admits it. All those years we were told that the low costs of Uber, Airbnb, etc. were the result of technological magic driven by their special talents for innovation; that these silicon valley companies all had lightning in a bottle. Now we can all see the emperor never had any clothes, that it wasn’t magic. It was just wildly wasteful and inefficient cash burn. The only real “disruption” these companies managed to effect was the evasion of labor laws, anti-monopoly laws, and consumer protection.”
Read MoreThe Gravel Institute
The ride-hailing company Uber is everywhere: it has rapidly become one of the most ubiquitous corporate entities in the United States. But beneath all of its bluster, Uber has a big secret: there’s no profit, no gains in efficiency or effectiveness, and, above all, no innovation. Simply put, Uber is one of the biggest scams in American economic history. And it’s not just scamming its investors (although it definitely is): it’s scamming you – its users – and, most of all, it’s scamming its drivers. While they get rich, you get ripped off. Edward Ongweso, Jr., technology reporter at VICE News, explains.
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