ADCU announce 24-hour national Uber strike on 20 July

Image credit: ADCU

The ADCU are to stage a 24-hour strike on 20 July as a result of the ‘Uber Files’ scandal engulfing the private hire industry.

The App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU) are striking and staging a public protest to demand that Uber immediately change several policies. Some of those changes being called for include obeying the Supreme Court ruling on worker rights in full and the dismissal of Uber Executive Board member Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty.

The Union is requesting that passengers do not cross the Uber driver picket line and do not use the service on Wednesday. The ADCU has invited the public to join the demonstration at Uber’s UK head office.

The Union say the ride-hailing firm has failed to comply with the Supreme Court and lower court rulings to pay drivers at least the minimum wage after costs for all working time from log on to log off. Instead, Uber has chosen to observe worker status for the working time periods only from dispatch to drop off but excludes waiting time, which leaves drivers short-changed for about 40% of their true working time.

In addition, last year Uber arbitrarily set the HMRC reimbursement rate of 45p for the purposes of calculating driver costs in determining minimum wage payments. However, this rate is not appropriate for commercial vehicle and was anyway set in 2011 and certainly does not reflect 36% fuel inflation since last year. The Union is demanding full compliance with the courts, fares to be increased to £2.50 per mile and 20p per minute and that Uber commission be capped at 15%.

James Farrar, ADCU General Secretary, said: “Uber’s intense political influencing continues apace while the government yet again delays long promised employment legislation to curb excesses of the gig economy. Uber has even gone a brazen step further beyond run of the mill lobbying to even hire elected officials to senior management roles in the company. Because nothing has changed, we have no choice but to strike and take to the streets. We ask the public to support us, not just for our sake, but to stand against the corrosive effect Uber has on our democracy, the rule of law and the integrity of our regulatory bodies.”

Yaseen Aslam, ADCU President, said: “Uber is desperate to whitewash away the Uber Files revelations as sins of the distant past, but management behaviour is as egregious now as ever it was. Uber continues to defy the Supreme Court ruling to deny drivers their full rights to minimum wage and holiday pay for all working time. In making partial settlement in the wake of the landmark ruling, Uber took advantage of vulnerable drivers, already impoverished by the pandemic, to pressure them to settle for far less than what was really owed and to surrender their statutory rights.”