PROTEST PLIGHT
ADCU STAGED 24-HOUR STRIKE IN RESPONSE TO THE UBER FILES LEAK
The ADCU staged a 24-hour strike on Wednesday 20 July, to demand Uber be held accountable for the findings of the Uber Files, to see feature in this issue, click here. TechCrunch reports that the ADCU asked drivers not to open the app on Wednesday and asked passengers to not use the service. The union also held a public demonstration at Uber UK’s London head office between 12pm and 2pm. The ADCU said there was “good observance” of the picket line. The union is demanding that Uber immediately obey the UK’s Supreme Court ruling on worker rights in full, which last year re-classified Uber
drivers as workers. Furthermore, the ADCU demands that Uber pay its drivers back pay owed as a result of the court ruling; end “unethical political influenc- ing in the UK,” and dismiss executive board member Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, a “convicted criminal in France, whose conduct endangered drivers and pas- sengers and was exposed in the Uber files,” the union said in a statement. “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,” said Yaseen Aslam, ADCU presi- dent. “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.” The ADCU also says Uber only counts the time between dispatch and drop off, excluding waiting time, leaving drivers short-changed of about 40% of their true working time and is demand- ing that Uber increase fares to £2.50/mile and 20p/min and it com- mission be capped at 15% not 25%.
HAVOC THREAT AS PHV DRIVERS VOW TO BLOCKADE SANDWELL AQUATICS CENTRE DURING GAMES
More than 100 drivers protested out- side Oldbury Council House on Tuesday 26 July, ahead of the full Sandwell Council meeting. The Express and Star reports that the Sandwell Private Hire Drivers Associa- tion (SPHDA) promised to cause havoc during the Commonwealth Games after meeting with Sandwell Council officials the previous week. The drivers are demanding Sandwell Council reduces licence fees and cuts the number of car safety checks, improves health provision for drivers and allows MoT checks to be carried out by local mechanics instead of hav- ing to use the authority’s one garage, which they claim is unfit for purpose. SPHDA spokesman Mohammed Niwaz said: “We were told the council would look at our complaints and they would sort out what they could by next March. “Well, that would be just before the elections so then the new administra- tion could change everything, basically
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they have offered us lollipops and we will not accept them.” He said: “We will be parking all around the Aquatics Centre during every day of the Commonwealth Games and creating a blockade, perhaps Sandwell Council will listen then.” The threat from cabbies is all the more real because as they are all self- employed they do not need to ballot like rail workers and refuse workers who have also threatened strike action during the games.
Explaining the cabbies’ grievances, Mr Niwaz said: “We have to pay the highest licence fee around, nearly £400. We can’t just go to a doctors for a health check but must go through the council’s occupational health service which can take months, where in Birmingham and Wolverhampton they get seen by doctors straight away. “Sandwell Council is killing the taxi industry in the borough. “Our costs have rocketed recently. I have been a taxi driver for 40 years and have never known it so bad. It used to cost me £45 to fill my tank but now it is £70, so knowing that we are paying out hundreds of pounds more because we are in Sandwell than other drivers in Dudley, Wolverhampton and Birming- ham is disgusting.” Previously, on more than one occasion, traffic has been brought to a standstill in Sandwell as protesting drivers marched from West Bromwich to Oldbury Council House.
AUGUST 2022
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