Platform workers can no longer be fired automatically by algorithms, according to new European Union rules agreed today in a sweeping reform of the gig economy that will affect Uber drivers and Deliveroo couriers. 'Now we have a proper system, which is something that doesn't exist anywhere else around the world,' said Elisabetta Gualmini, an Italian politician who led the negotiations for the European Parliament, in a press conference on Wednesday. She described the new rules as a real improvement in the labor rights for millions of workers. 'We do not want an inhuman labor market,' she said, citing the case of a delivery rider in Italy who was fired last year via an automatic email because he did not complete a delivery. The reason' He had been killed just hours before in a road accident. The platform involved, Glovo, told his family at the time it had been a mistake. The issue of platform work is an existential issue for Europe, Gualmini said. 'We are not against changes in innovation,' she added. 'But we think that we have to manage these big transitions and transformations in order to protect workers.'...
A trade union that won a landmark case against Uber in the UK's Supreme Court had a 'culture of abuse and toxicity,' with an internal power struggle threatening to paralyze its operations, according to a damning independent report obtained by WIRED. The report into the App Drivers and Couriers Union, or ADCU, which was commissioned by the union itself last summer and conducted by a leading UK barrister, also identified incidents of racial abuse and Islamophobia, mistreatment of staff, and evidence that senior figures within the union created well-paid jobs which they subsequently appointed themselves into. James Farrar, the union's leader and general secretary, resigned when the report was finalized last week. In his resignation, which he shared with WIRED, Farrar acknowledged his 'part' in the problems at the union but said that its 'future has never looked brighter,' adding that it was 'time to make way for new leaders, fresh ideas and different ways of doing things.' Farrar declined to comment on the report's findings on the record....
In 2020, Nazia was working at a data entry office in Hyderabad, but dreamed of being a beautician. Then, on YouTube, she saw a video about Urban Company, a platform similar to the US site TaskRabbit, which promises to connect workers'plumbers, electricians, painters, beauticians, and others'with clients who need their services. Workers who join the platform as beauticians often pay upward of $500 to register and receive a salon equipment kit. For Nazia, it felt like an investment worth taking. When it launched in 2014, Urban Company was revolutionary for India's disjointed home services market, providing customers with vetted and trained workers through an easy-to-use interface. Nazia was one of tens of thousands of workers who joined the platform, which grew and grew thanks to consecutive rounds of fundraising from investors including Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, and Prosus Ventures, becoming the largest home services provider in India, valued at almost $3 billion. Then it expanded into the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. In 2023, it launched in the US....
Last week, Lyft suddenly announced that its cofounders, president Logan Green and CEO John Zimmer, would step away from the ride-hailing company after 11 years. David Risher, a former executive at Microsoft and Amazon who has been on Lyft's board since 2021, will take the helm later this month. Lyft's C-suite shuffle was sudden, but hardly surprising. For one thing, tech companies in their teens and tweens seem to be entering a founder flop era. Twitch's Emmett Shear, Instacart's Apoorva Mehta, Pinterest's Ben Silbermann, and Peloton's John Foley all recently bid adieu. But Lyft in particular is struggling. It hasn't turned a profit. It's losing market share to Uber. It laid off 13 percent of its staff last fall. Its stock price is down nearly 90 percent since it went public in 2019. And yet the exits of Green and Zimmer say something about how tech industry vibes have shifted since the early 2010's, when young-ish dudes were raising mountains of cash to disrupt, well, everything. In the beginning, Lyft's primary offering was ' vibes. Travis Kalanick's Uber was cutthroat, modeled after pricier black car services and founded because Kalanick and his crew aspired to be 'ballers.' Lyft, by contrast, recruited anyone with a license, a vehicle, and a willingness to affix a pink fuzzy mustache to their car and greet strangers with a fist bump, welcoming passengers into their front seats. It was Lyft that piloted the peer-to-peer model of ride hailing, the idea that anyone could become a taxicab driver if they downloaded the right app....
