Uber sputters in London
CABBIE WAR PITS OLD AND NEW
You are a passenger hailing a ride in a city both historic and hip, a guardian of custom and a hub of change. You might not realize it, but your taxi choice — go with tradition or punch an app? — puts you right in the middle of a debate about the future of work, technology and who regulates whom.
In London, the ride-sharing company Uber, employing tens of thousands of gig-working immigrants in humming Japanese hybrids, finds itself in a high-stakes brawl with the long-established cabbie business, whose iconic black taxis are operated by oldschool drivers who’ve spent years committing to memory every street in the city.
Last month, the London transit authority dropped a bombshell. It was not going to renew Uber’s five-year-old licence, it said, because the Silicon Valley corporation was not a “fit and proper” company to run a taxi service. The authorities revealed few specifics but said Uber had failed to report serious criminal offences allegedly committed by its drivers. They also said Uber was not conducting rigorous background and medical checks on its operators.
Commuters were stunned. More than 3.5 million people here have downloaded the app, making it one of the biggest ride-hailing markets in the world. There are 40,000 Uber drivers cruising around London. They are allowed to keep driving for now, pending an appeal the company filed Friday. Almost 900,000 people have signed an online petition against the ban.
The Uber fight in London not only pits new ways against old, it also reveals modern-day ruptures in the labour market — such as, what is the value of a worker who knows things versus a worker who knows how to look up things online?
There is also this: In multicultural London, Uber drivers are far more likely to be named Ali or Muhammad, while black-cab drivers tend to be an Ollie or a Brian. And the fight is playing out in a city where much of the white working class finds itself challenged by the forces of globalism, mass immigration and galloping technological change, all hot-button topics since Britain voted to leave the European Union.
After they were alerted that their licence to operate would be yanked, Uber’s libertarian-minded executives accused London of going Luddite — hostile to cutting-edge technology. The company claimed that officials had “caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.”
The accusations didn’t go down well. London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, a child of immigrants and a rising star in the Labour Party, said that tech companies such as Uber were indeed welcome but needed “to play by the rules.”
Many cities around the world have seen tussles among taxi and Uber drivers. But the clash in London is stark because it so clearly pits a bespoke experience — the boxy black cab, straight out of central casting, the East London driver as tour guide with volumes of opinions — against techie upstarts.
A new arrival from Libya or Bangladesh with a work visa can start driving for Uber within weeks of landing in London, assisted by GPS navigation systems, their cellphone screens guiding them with Google Maps and the Israeli-designed Waze.
Meanwhile, the London cabbie often spends two or three or four years studying for “the Knowledge,” a mindmaze battery of exams that involve memorizing more than 25,000 streets, mews and passageways and 20,000 landmarks.
Uber is relatively cheap — and popular, especially among the young.
An Uber to Heathrow or Gatwick airports might cost US$50. A black cab can charge twice that.
After the Uber ban was announced, cabbie John McDonnell felt that his protests against the ride-hail app had finally paid off.
“They weren’t going to push us around,” said the 51-year-old driver, who has attended numerous anti-Uber demonstrations.
Harsha Prabath Kumara, a 33-year-old Uber driver originally from Sri Lanka, said he doesn’t understand the allegation that Uber’s service is unsafe. “You can see the driver’s name, the driver’s licence details, you can see the driver’s rating and feedback others have given, you can see what kind of person he is. If you don’t like it, you can reject it straight away,” he said.