The “Uber Files” leak reveals the power of the company’s multimillion-dollar lobbying effort — and how it worked with governments around the world to undercut workers’ rights.
by Paris Marx
Part 1
Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.” Those were the words of Nairi Hourdajian, Uber’s head of global communications, in a message sent to a colleague in 2014 as the company was facing the prospect of being shut down in Thailand and India.
Revealed as part of a trove of more than 124,000 leaked documents and correspondences from 2013 to 2017, dubbed the “Uber Files,” the admission gets to the core of how Uber became the globe-spanning transportation company it is today: by breaking laws, evading authorities, cultivating connections with powerful people, and putting its drivers on the front line of the backlash. The documents provide new details on aspects of the company that have come to light in recent years.
Revealed as part of a trove of more than 124,000 leaked documents and correspondences from 2013 to 2017, dubbed the “Uber Files,” the admission gets to the core of how Uber became the globe-spanning transportation company it is today: by breaking laws, evading authorities, cultivating connections with powerful people, and putting its drivers on the front line of the backlash. The documents provide new details on aspects of the company that have come to light in recent years.
The Uber Files show how the company recognized it needed to get close to politicians to ensure it wasn’t regulated out of existence. David Plouffe and Jim Messina used connections and goodwill from their time in the Obama administration to help Uber expand across Europe and the Middle East, including getting US diplomats in France and the Netherlands to intervene on the company’s behalf. Uber also developed close relationships with former British chancellor George Osborne, French president Emmanuel Macron when he was economy minister, former European Commission vice president Neelie Kroes, and Toronto mayor John Tory, just to name a few.
The company developed a “kill switch” that would remotely encrypt its computers and devices if an office was raided by authorities, used at least two dozen times in jurisdictions that include Canada, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary, Romania, and Hong Kong. It lobbied governments to ensure regulatory efforts would treat it as a technology company instead of a transportation company, and was happy to put drivers in harm’s way when it benefited the company. “Violence guarantee[s] success,” said CEO Travis Kalanick after some executives expressed reservations about a plan to send drivers to a 2016 protest in Paris where they could be attacked.
These stories are just the tip of the iceberg, as the files have been shared with forty media outlets which are expected to keep publishing in the coming days. Uber is already trying to get ahead of the bad press, repetitional hit, and possible regulatory action: in a statement, the company points to the many revelations that have already been made about how it operated under Kalanick’s leadership, and tries to make it seem as though the bad actions being documented are from a period in the company’s history that’s long passed. But nothing could be further from the truth.
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