According to the Global Times, more than 500 female passengers recently sued ride-hailing giant Uber in a San Francisco court in the United States.
According to the British "Times" reported on the 14th, the plaintiff's lawyer in the case pointed out that Uber learned from 2014 that some female passengers were sexually assaulted, raped, tailgated and harassed by online ride-hailing drivers, but put the company's business growth above protecting passenger safety.
Uber began charging passengers a $1 "security fee" in 2014 and said the money would be used to support Uber in achieving "industry-leading driver background checks." But former Uber employees revealed that Uber only verbally said that it wanted to make taxis safer, but in fact Uber wanted to increase profits by relying on "security fees". In June, Uber released its second "U.S. Security Report," which disclosed nearly 1,000 sexual assaults, though Uber noted that the number of sexual assault complaints in the current security report was 38 percent lower than in the first report.
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550 women in the United States collectively sued Uber
According to Jimu News, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported on July 14 that up to 550 women in the United States said they were sexually assaulted by drivers on the Uber ride-hailing platform, and they collectively sued Uber. Former Uber executives broke the news that the Uber platform lacked background checks on drivers, and even concealed the fact that drivers sexually assaulted women.
On July 13, local time, about 550 women in the United States collectively entrusted law firms to submit litigation documents to the court. The lawsuit documents list multiple allegations, including female passengers being "kidnapped, sexually assaulted, beaten, raped, illegally imprisoned, stalked, harassed and other personal assaults of varying degrees by drivers of Uber's ride-hailing platform."
The law firm said the sexual assaults involved in the allegations occurred in multiple U.S. states, and that at least 150 more potential cases are under investigation.
In June, Uber released its Uber U.S. Security Report. The report shows that between 2019 and 2020, the company received 3824 complaints of serious sexual assault. In 2020, 998 sexual assaults, including 141 rapes, were recorded on Uber's ride-hailing platform.
In response to the matter, an Uber spokesperson said Uber has established new security features and a passenger-centric policy. Uber will continue to make passenger safety a top priority.
However, lawyers in the lawsuit argue that as early as 2014, Uber was aware of the sexual assault and rape of female passengers by drivers on its platform, but did not take drastic measures to regulate it, always putting profit growth above customer safety.
Lawyer Adam Slater said: "Uber's entire business model is premised on allowing passengers to go home safely, but the company never pays attention to the safety of passengers, and the company's profit growth comes at the expense of passenger safety." ”
On July 11, local time, a former Uber executive filed a number of malfeasance charges against the company. Evidence provided by the former executive shows that Uber headquarters has a "special control switch" that is turned on as soon as law enforcement comes to investigate, erasing key information to evade police investigation.
In addition, the former Uber executive claimed in the allegations that Uber lacked background checks on platform drivers and even deliberately concealed the fact that platform drivers sexually assaulted women.
British media exposed Uber's black history Biden and Macron were involved
According to the Global Times, just a few days ago, the British "Guardian" exclusively disclosed more than 100,000 internal confidential documents of the famous American ride-hailing company "Uber".
According to The Guardian, the documents show how the leading players in the U.S. and global ride-hailing industries have grown bigger around the world step by step through a series of illegal, deceitful tactics and collusion with politicians.
And major power leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron have also been embroiled in Uber's internal classified documents exposed by the Guardian.
According to The Guardian, the 124,000 internal confidential documents of Uber covered emails, text messages and chats on the social app WhatsAPP, which involved 40 countries between 2013 and 2017.
Screenshot from the Guardian report, the same (Global Times)
The documents show that during the leadership of the company's founder Travis Kalanick, the company, in order to compete with taxis for the market, directly encouraged French Uber drivers to take to the streets to organize tit-for-tat protests when French taxi drivers protested the impact of the ride-hailing industry on them, and even threatened that "violence can ensure success" when they protested.
At the same time, in order to ensure that it can get the support of many governments, and successfully get these countries to change the law to allow Uber to grow, Uber, which has a large number of venture capital firms, has invested $90 million in public relations and government lobbying in 2016 alone, and the politicians who are lobbied are mayors or transportation department heads who can directly make decisions.
Even Uber influences officials to make decisions in favor of Uber through their friends and family, and will give them financial benefits, such as company stock, or simply turn them into "strategic investors."
In particular, the documents mention that French President Emmanuel Macron has given Uber a lot of support and assistance during his tenure as France's economy minister, and has even told Uber that he has reached a "secret agreement" with opposition parties to support Uber's development.
For those politicians who oppose the company, Uber executives are arrogant. According to the documents, Uber's top brass also had an affair with current German Chancellor Schultz, then mayor of Hamburg. Schultz demanded that Uber pay a minimum salary for ride-hailing drivers, and was verbally called a "true comedian" by an Uber executive.
Although the current president of the United States, Biden, who was the vice president of the United States at the time, was very supportive of Uber's development, but Uber executives were also quite arrogant towards him at that time. Documents that have been exposed show that once Biden delayed a meeting with Uber founder Kalanick while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, and as a result Kalanick sent a message to colleagues saying that he would make Biden realize that "every minute he is late, he will spend one minute less with me."
In addition, according to the Guardian, these internal confidential documents of Uber also show that in countries that regard ride-hailing as an "illegal industry", Uber executives still choose to land in these countries when they know that their business is illegal, and even let their IT departments design a system to counter the collection of evidence by law enforcement in these countries.
At present, Uber has responded to the more than 100,000 confidential documents disclosed by the Guardian containing the "black history" of the company's fortune, saying that the problems exposed in these documents have been disclosed by the media many times before, and Uber has also dismissed a number of executives and replaced the CEO.
"We don't make excuses for past behavior," Uber said.
Edited | duan Lian Du Hengfeng
Proofreading | Lu Xiangyong
Daily economic news is synthesized from the Global Times, Jimu News, public information, etc
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