In the relationship between Uber and its drivers, Uber is both the employer (on eof the two parties in the workplace relationship) and the umpire (responsible for negotiating disputes between the two parties). This puts Uber in a opwerful positon. When Uber's policies and practices don't square with driver experiences, it is Uber who stands as judge. One of the benefits of app-mediated work is that work time and activities are monitored [...] technology doesn't produce accountability automatically. In its system, Uber has the power to enforce or determine what is paid [...] Drivers have very little recourse in negotiating inequities in the system.

[...] While five minutes is the standard waiting period, after which drivers are to collect their cancellation fee, Uber "recommends" drivers wait at least twice as long for the passenger to show up, essentially generating goodwill for the company through the driver's unpaid waiting time. [...]

[...] Drivers don't have a dedicated human manager who responds to their inquiries. Instead, they have community support representatives (CSRs), located at the email equivalent of a call center, often located abroad, such as in the Philippines, and managed by third-party companies, like Zendesk. Effectively, Uber offshores and automates its main communications with drivers. Drivers receive automated replies to most of their messages, which often appear to be based on keywords in the the text of their emails. [...]

[...] I ask if the company tries to build trust with its drivers, and hte answer - that Uber cares about building trust with all of its end users - floors me. The fact that even in an informal interview this person is deploying the language used in the lawsuits gives me pause [...] the senior employee persists in asking me how Uber can improve its relationship with drivers. I can't hep but think this is roughly akin to asking how to improve your relationship with your girlfriend after she discovers that she is, in fact, your mistress.

[...] the company contorts itself in order to avoid giving the impression that its workers are considered employees [...] "It says bicycle couriers who work for Deliveroo are never to be referred to as workers, employees, or staff, and that the Deliveroo jackets they have to wear on the job are not uniforms but 'branded clothing'. These workers don't have 'contracts', says the document, but 'supplier agreements'. They don't 'schedule shifts', but 'indicate their availability'. And they can never get sacked - instead, they're 'terminated'."

[...] as Uber enters a new space, it takes a direct-to-consumer approach, bypassing potential barriers, like regulations or political opposition, by winning over consumers with its effective app. It cautions opponents that might try to constrain some of its practices by conveying the message, "Be grateful for the disruptive innovation we bring, because what we offer is superior to the regulations that would hold us back" (what I refer to as "gratitude logic"). Because of its size and influence, it simply shrugs off regulation that it doesn't like. Then, Uber shifts and reshifts its identity, trying to find exploitable cracks and inconsistencies between various systems of rules and laws. Finally, Uber plays stakeholders against each other, using temporary alliances to gain a foothold wherever it goes. In many cases, drivers, passengers, cities, and others benefit from Uber's operations, but there are always others who are left behind.

[...] when Uber first arrives in a city, rates are higher and drivers are often happier. Then, it floods the market with new drivers, sometimes by widening eligibility criteria (such as by extending the range of cars drivers can use), and often lowers the rates at which driven earn their income. By creating a job for everyone, Uber can undermine the interests of dedicated full-timers. In effect, one civil rights cause—equality of access—is pitted against another cause: job security. The sheen of civil-society partnerships gives Uber cover for practices that negatively affect drivers in other arenas.

[...] The multiplying numbers who hold a stake in Uber's future can create paradoxical clashes between civil rights and labor rights efforts when they might otherwise be aligned, because organization in favor of or in resistance to Uber is not uniform.

The specter of managing labor's economic relations along racial lines evokes other social struggles in American history. For example, historian Nancy MacLean reminds us that at the turn of the nineteenth century, a battle brewed in Tennessee between free miners and employers who (in collusion with the state) were keeping wages low by renting cheap convict labor. "The widely reviled system, so redolent of slavery, created a perverse incentive to lock new up for petty offenses so the state could rent them out to coal companies as dirt-cheap labor to rake the jobs of free miners, who had organized the United Mine Workers of America to demand living wages and decent treatment." [...]