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Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, Reputation and
Corporate Communication,and integration of people with disabilities.
Mar 12 · 6 min read

Where you come from? Where

are you going, Uber?

Photo by Simone Acquaroli on Unsplash

Note: This post was first published in Spanish and can be found here.

The American company with presence in more than 630 cities in 77

countries has been causing a number of scandals and irresponsible actions.

Earlier in another opinion article, I spoke about the need to innovate

responsibly. Uber is an example of that need, but not only in terms of
innovation per se, but also in how the company works.

The saying that CSR has nothing to do with how a company spends its
profits but how it makes them has already been widely used, but obviously
it is still real and in full force.

Uber, founded in 2009, has never stood out especially for having in its
agenda managing the company with responsibility before any of its
stakeholders, and for growing and obtaining benefits ahead of any
other consideration and at any price.

Below I will mention some of the most notorious irresponsible behaviors of

the company.

The workers, far from being the most

important and careful asset.
Uber’s treatment of its employees cannot be said to be the best.

Susan Fowler, a former company engineer, claimed to have been sexually

harassed in Uber by her boss and when she complained to HR her
complaints were not heard and her boss threatened to fire her for making
the situation known.

Several Uber employees also used cocaine during a company meeting in Las
Vegas and a manager had to be fired after besieging several women.

After these facts came to light, Jeff Jones left his position as president in
March of last year for “incompatibilities with what was seen and
experienced” in the company after only six months in office.

Also, Amit Singhal, former vice president of the company who was accused
of sexual abuse in his previous stage for Google, was fired after only five
weeks in his post for not revealing that data when he was hired by Uber.

With regard to drivers, there have also been problems, since the company is
accused of not respecting their labor rights and treating them as self-
employed when they are employees.

But these drivers can rest assured that this violation of rights will end in a
more or less near future when the use of autonomous cars is implemented
in that company and no longer necessary. Notice the irony.

Lately, Uber has also been denounced for labor discrimination against
women.

War on the competition.

The competition is seen in Uber as something to sink in any way and by any
means.

In 2014 in some North American cities, employees of Uber were dedicated

to making trips in cars of their Lyft competition, to make surveys and
counteroffers to their drivers so that they become drivers of Uber, and also
to hire and cancel journeys at peak times to prevent Lyft drivers from
taking the best customers.

In March of 2017 Uber used a tool called Greyball, to identify and avoid
authorities in various cities in countries where the Uber service is
prohibited or has many difficulties to implement.

The latest of the 2017 year is another software used against Lyft. It allowed
the creation of false profiles of Lyft customers, making the competition
system believe that they were looking for drivers, allowing Uber to see
which Lyft drivers were nearby and what prices they were offering for
different routes. Apparently, it also helped Uber know which drivers could
offer cash incentives to leave Lyft.

It gives the feeling that in this company they are masters when it comes to
guerrilla tactics and espionage to the competition.

Clients, simply a means to an end.

It seems that in the Uber business equation, the client customers who use
the service is the most benefited from the existence of this service.

The rates they pay are a priori lower than those of any taxi, the deal seems
exquisite or so it is advertised, and even drivers offer bottles of water at no
charge to passengers.

But customers have also been victims of errors and malpractice of the
company.

A few weeks ago it was uncovered (by the new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi,
who was put to the mismanagement of his predecessor) the theft of
information from no less than 57 million Uber customers that had
happened in October 2016.

Uber paid 100,000 dollars to the hackers to erase the stolen information
and not make it public. The reader will tell me if paying this “rescue”
ensures that the data will be erased.

The fact is that no one outside the company knew about this theft or
another less serious one that occurred in 2014, for which in February of last
year it was fined 20,000 dollars.

The new CEO had to go out and explain what happened, apologize and
promise that it would not happen again.

In addition to these information thefts, some passengers have been

attacked by some drivers and even an employee of the British Embassy
in Lebanon was recently raped and killed.

Transparency, what is it?

On the Uber website for Spain there is no sign of anything that has to
do with CSR or the sustainability of the company, and neither in the
English website and to be honest, doesn’t seem anything strange to me.

Because… if there was any CSR content related… what could read there and
what degree of truthfulness could it have?

Only by searching on Google (for searches related to CSR or sustainability

of Uber) you get to a page within the corporate website (in English) which
only speaks of diversity and in which they say they are “building a fantastic
place to work for everyone. “

I have no doubt that, if you take it seriously, you have a great challenge
ahead, Uber.

Not everything is valid in business.

I could continue to enunciate problems, scandals, and irresponsibility, but
the space for this article is limited.

All of the above is a sample of what happens when a business is founded

putting everything ahead of ethics.

Uber has 14 core cultural values, including vision, obsession with quality,
innovation, “going face to face with colleagues”, ferocity, execution,
communication and something called “super pumping”.

Essentially, their employees must have a “busy” mentality and the motto
“do whatever it takes” to get the company in the right direction.

And doing what it takes can be very dangerous and a “right direction” may
not really be the right one.

Following all the problems described, in June 2017 the company announced
a campaign to renew its image that is called “180 days of change”, and also
forced the resignation of its founder and CEO until that time Travis
Kalanick, putting in its place to the aforementioned Dara Khosrowshahi.

Controversies around Uber have made it that in the US alone, the

company’s market share in travel managed by mobile applications
decreased up to 77% in May when it was 84% at the beginning of the
year.

Interestingly, his competitor Lyft has been the main beneficiary of it, in a
kind of avenging karma.

To this decrease in market share must be added the question that its license
to operate in many countries or cities is in question since recently its
activities in Europe have been assimilated to those of a transport service
instead of a service of the information society as the company maintains.

When it is no longer regulated by the principle of freedom to provide

services within the framework of the services of the information society, its
activity will be subject to the conditions required of the rest of the
carriers, thus losing part of its competitive advantage.

We will see how the company and its business evolves in the future, and if it
gives a radical change of attitude or is bound to become less and less
representative.

Uber Corporate Responsibility Csr Reputation Sustainability

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Albert Vilariño Alonso Follow

Consultant in Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability,
Reputation and Corporate Communication,and integration of people
with disabilities.

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