“Uber fined after ‘robo-firing’ drivers”

A court in Amsterdam has ruled that Uber failed to comply with a court order when an algorithm made the decision to dismiss two drivers from the UK and Portugal.

The District Court of Amsterdam ordered Uber to pay €584,000 in penalty payments to the fired drivers, with €4,000 accruing for each additional day of non-compliance.

The court order … required the taxi and delivery company to provide transparency in how it used automation to make decisions to workers affected by them.

The case was brought by Worker Info Exchange (WIE), supporting the UK’s App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU).

Uber argued that it should not give the workers more information about the decision to dismiss them in order to protect trade secrets. It said the drivers’ accounts had been flagged due to “very specific circumstances” and that the decisions were reviewed by human teams….

James Farrar, director of the Worker Info Exchange and the claimant who brought the landmark Supreme Court case against the company in 2021 that ruled Uber drivers to be workers – and therefore due basic rights – said the company “habitually flouts the law and defies the orders of even the most senior courts”…