On January 26, 2016, more than 2,100 angry French taxi drivers, supported by colleagues from Belgium, Spain and Italy, staged a mass protest against Uber in and around Paris, blocking the ring road and turning the city center into a traffic jam.
Puffs of smoke rose into the air from burning tires. As anger flared outside the blocked Orly airport, someone was hit by a van. Nearly two dozen taxi drivers were arrested for crimes ranging from assault to arson.
In Lille, an Uber driver was punched in the face after dropping off a customer – or “rider”, as the company calls them – at a hotel. There were similar violent incidents in Toulouse, Marseille and Aix-en-Provence.
After midnight, an Uber manager in France filed a report on the situation. “Team – all safe. Drivers/riders – generally safe despite 53 incidents so far, including 35 involving a rider,” he wrote. “Three relatively serious cases involving violence in taxis, including one car badly damaged and two drivers beaten.”
A demonstration by taxi drivers blocks traffic in Paris in 2016. Photo: Aurélien Meunier/Getty Images
The “team”—Uber’s direct employees—were indeed safe. They were told to avoid public display of Uber and to work out of the office during the protest, with operations managed from a remote emergency room. As the strike will continue for a second day, “a lot of security” has been hired, the French manager told headquarters.
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What are Uber files?
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The Uber files are a global investigation based on a set of 124,000 documents leaked to the Guardian. The data consists of emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the Silicon Valley giant’s top executives, as well as memos, presentations, notebooks, briefing documents and invoices.
The leaked records cover 40 countries and cover the period from 2013 to 2017, the period when Uber was aggressively expanding around the world. They reveal how the company broke the law, defrauded police and regulators, used violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments around the world.
To facilitate a global public interest investigation, the Guardian shared the data with 180 journalists in 29 countries through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The investigation was managed and led by the Guardian with the ICIJ.
In a statement, Uber said: “We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly inconsistent with our current values. Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we have done in the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”
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However, Uber drivers have had no such protection. In hours they would be back on the front lines of France’s taxi wars. Uber does not count them as employees.
According to Uber’s filings, some at the company appear to have seen a silver lining in the attacks on drivers. When attacks did occur, Uber moved quickly to use violence in a campaign to pressure governments to rewrite laws that hindered Uber’s chances of expansion.
We maintain the narrative of violence for several days before offering the solution. Uber manager
It was a playbook repeated in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, but it was perhaps most evident in France. Before dawn in Europe on January 29, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was sending out messages about how best to respond to the chaos in Paris.
“Civil disobedience,” Kalanick fired in a quick burst of messages. “Fifteen thousand drivers… 50,000 riders… Peaceful march or sit-in.” Uber’s vice president of communications, Rachel Whetstone, responded cautiously, noting “FYI only” that Uber’s head of public policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Mark McGann, is “disturbed by taxi violence” against Uber drivers.
Travis Kalanick speaks to students in Mumbai, India in 2016. Photo: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Whetstone added that taxi unions have been “taken over by the far right who are spoiling for a fight”. “A person to think about,” she said. McGahn chimed in, suggesting the French team would “deal with civil disobedience effectively and at the same time keep people safe.”
Kalanick’s surprisingly candid response suggests he thinks any additional trouble could benefit Uber in its ongoing battle with the French government. “If we have 50,000 riders, they won’t and can’t do anything,” he wrote. “I think it’s worth it. Guarantee of violence[s] Good luck. And these guys have to be resisted, right? I agreed that the right place and time should be considered.’
A former senior Uber executive who was present at the time recalled feeling that Kalanick’s instructions were part of a broader strategic push by the company to “weaponize drivers” and support lobbying pressure by keeping the “controversy hot.” .
In a statement, Kalanick’s spokesman questioned the authenticity of some of the documents. She said Kalanick “never suggested that Uber should benefit from violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion that he was involved in such activity would be completely false.
Following Kalanick’s announcement, an Uber team in Europe began preparing an action plan for the coming week. Drivers were urged to sign Uber-organized letters to the French president and prime minister to save their jobs; a mass passenger petition was organized in defense of cheap transport.
A demonstration was planned, ostensibly by an independent drivers association – which was actually run by Uber. Behind the scenes, the executives of the taxi-hailing app decided the time and place of the demonstration and wrote a full-page manifesto in the French media. News reports indicated that only a few hundred drivers showed up.
French riot police push an overturned car as striking French taxi drivers demonstrate in Paris, June 2015. Photo: Charles Platiau/Reuters
Violence against Uber drivers and customers is by no means unique to France. The company often launches into new markets in defiance of local regulations, using billions of dollars in venture capital to fund huge subsidies that undermine local traditional taxis, provoking a furious backlash.
McGahn described the violence in Europe in an email to San Francisco a year before the Paris protests. He wrote in January 2015 that in France alone “80 drivers [have been] physically assaulted, more than 10 ended up in hospital, depriving them of income… Dozens of cars destroyed”.
One man who tried to take an Uber after a taxi driver told him he was on strike was “beaten up” and needed facial reconstruction surgery. There was “increasing and credible evidence of taxi hijacking and ambushing of Uber drivers,” McGann wrote.
The head of Uber in Italy was “physically and verbally assaulted constantly”. In Spain, MacGann reported “months of burnt cars and beaten drivers…managers often demand bodyguards when they speak in public”.
Over time, Uber drivers have been attacked in dozens of countries and even killed by taxi drivers in South Africa, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
Hundreds of students take part in a protest march against the killing of three students and an Uber driver in Mexico in March 2020. Photo: Imelda Medina/Reuters
The attacks pose an obvious challenge for Uber, discouraging people from driving for the platform. On the other hand, some at the company seem to believe this is to Uber’s advantage. As senior communications manager for Europe, he sent a terse email on August 24, 2015, following violent taxi protests against Uber drivers in Belgium: “Violence in France has led to regulatory momentum.”
Sometimes the scenario went like this: an Uber driver is beaten, stabbed or otherwise attacked by taxi drivers; managers at an Uber office in the country alert the national media in the hope of free publicity against the taxis; lobbyists use the incident to secure meetings with ministers and government officials and promote favorable legislation.
In 2015, after Brussels taxi drivers organized to attack Uber drivers, the company’s general manager in Belgium noted: “Already one driver stepped forward to speak to the press: he had a full sack of flour thrown at him and the passengers from the taxi. He pressed charges and a taxi driver would spend a night in jail… Good story.”
Similarly, after a Belgian Uber driver’s car was attacked by taxi drivers and his side mirror was broken, one of the company’s senior internal lobbyists urged his colleagues: “We have to use this to our advantage.”
A similar approach was taken in the Netherlands in March 2015, when masked men, reported to be angry taxi drivers, attacked Uber drivers with knuckleballs and a hammer. Uber employees exchanged emails about a strategy to use violence to win concessions from the Dutch government.
The victimized drivers were encouraged to file police reports, which were shared with De Telegraaf, the leading Dutch daily. They “will be published without our fingerprint on the front page tomorrow,” one manager wrote on March 16.
The documents suggest executives were willing to let the violence go on for some time to build pressure on the government before the company presented a plan that would allow it to temporarily circumvent the regulations. “We maintain the narrative of violence for several days before offering the solution,” the manager wrote.
When this story materialized in the Dutch press, McGann replied: “Excellent job. This is exactly what we wanted and the timing is perfect.” Referring subsequent news to other executives, he noted: “First step in the campaign, get the media talking about violence against taxis.”
Uber’s David Plouffe speaks after lunch at a roundtable discussion on economic opportunities for New Yorkers. Photo: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy
David Plouffe, former Barack Obama campaign manager who was then Uber’s vice president of policy, was outspoken about…
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