The rideshare company flagged concerns with Safe Transport Victoria after an FWC decision
Dismissal laws for gig workers are jeopardising passengers’ safety, Uber said after the Fair Work Commission (FWC) ordered the rideshare company to reinstate a driver who faced dangerous driving complaints.
The FWC judged that the driver was unfairly deactivated for speeding and erratic driving while on social media. Per the Australian Financial Review, the ruling was partly because the complaining passengers did not testify against the driver on the witness stand.
Three complaints had been logged against the driver over a four-month period; one accused him of going nearly 50km/h over the speed limit. The passenger claimed that the driver had been swerving and running into potholes while texting and engaging with YouTube. The other two complaints accused the driver of speeding while on Instagram and phone calls.
The driver denied the allegations and highlighted his spotless record across 6,000 trips. He suggested that the passengers were likely inebriated.
However, Uber said its records showed that the driver did 93km/h in a 60km/h zone in the first incident, 89km/h in a 40km/h zone in the second incident, and 92km/h in an 80km/h zone in the third incident.
FWC commissioner Stephen Crawford found that the driver’s evidence held up in cross-examination while the passengers did not provide proof of the complaints during the proceedings.
“It is conceivable that the three riders may have taken a dislike to [the driver] for a range of reasons and this could have prompted them to complain about his driving”, Crawford said in a statement published by AFR.
The commissioner added that due to inadequate raw driving data, he could not uphold Uber’s interpretation of the driver’s speed on the evidence. Crawford considered the driver’s record and concluded he was unlikely to have driven dangerously.
Crawford noted that Uber itself had not disclosed adequate detail about the complaints to the driver, which significantly limited his ability to respond.
Uber is presently appealing the ruling and calling for the reactivation order to be stayed. It said Crawford determined the matter on the papers and did not hear the evidence live even though his judgment was largely based on the driver’s credibility on the stand.
It said Crawford disregarded the security risks of revealing the complainants’ identities and downplayed the safety risks of reinstating the driver.
A number of deactivated drivers riders had complained about were reinstated by FWC recently – including a driver who was deactivated after 16 misconduct claims that included speeding, being on his phone and causing a crash, and making sexualized comments. Uber flagged its concerns with Safe Transport Victoria.
Nicole Ashcroft, Uber’s head of safety, called on the Commonwealth to prioritise amending the deactivation regime such that the system “properly balances procedural fairness with the need to keep the public safe”, per a statement published by AFR.
“This case is further evidence that the current system is not working as intended. Platforms must be able to act on legitimate safety reports and patterns of concerning behaviour to protect riders and the broader public”, Ashcroft said in a statement published by AFR.
Michael Kaine, national secretary of the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU), argued in a statement published by AFR that Uber had to invest in “proper human-led processes instead of algorithms”.
“We’ve already seen the FWC slam Uber’s complaint-handling as ‘illogical’ and ‘arbitrary’ in previous judgments”, Kaine said. “In this judgment we are seeing another example of inconsistent, opaque processes used by Uber to attempt to end a person’s livelihood, to the point where the company can’t even agree with itself on its data”.
TWU had acted for the driver accused of speeding.
