Over 124,000 files, leaked to the Guardian, have exposed Uber’s attempts to lobby politicians and governments, sidestep laws, and exploit its drivers.
Now known as the ‘Uber files’, these unprecedented documents cover 2013 to 2017, the five years that co-founder Travis Kalanick ran Uber, one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports. Kalanick’s efforts to have Uber running in cities around the world allegedly stopped aat nothing, reportedly not even taxi regulations or even laws.
The documents were leaked to the Guardian by Mark MacGann, who was formerly Uber’s chief lobbyist in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. From emails to WhatsApp messages between Uber’s most senior executives, the records span 40 countries and five years.
The investigation, led by the Guardian, involved 180 journalists in 29 countries through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The Guardian claims the data proves that ‘Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons.’
Kalanick: ‘Violence guarantees success’
Back in 2016, French taxi drivers engaged in mass strikes to protest the unfair competition they had with apps like Uber and Lyft. In Paris, the protests saw violent clashes between demonstrators and police. In one exchange leaked in the Uber files, Travis Kalanick reportedly implored other executives to send Uber drivers to the protests.
Kalanick allegedly told executives that the risk of harm to the Uber drivers was ‘worth it’, and that ‘violence guarantees success.’
In a statement to the Guardian, Mr Kalanick’s spokesperson maintained that he ‘never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety.’
The leak additionally shows texts between then-economy minister Emmanuel Macron and Kalanick. It claims that Macron allowed Uber direct access to his staff and office, and ‘appear[ed] to have gone to extraordinary lengths to help Uber’, going as far as to tell the company that he’d ‘brokered a secret deal’ with Uber’s opponents in the French cabinet.
‘We have and will not make excuses’
In a statement to the Guardian, Uber’s senior vice-president of public affairs, Jill Hazelbaker, said: ‘There has been no shortage of reporting on Uber’s mistakes prior to 2017. Thousands of stories have been published, multiple books have been written – there’s even been a TV series.‘
She continued: ‘Five years ago, those mistakes culminated in one of the most infamous reckonings in the history of corporate America. That reckoning led to an enormous amount of public scrutiny, a number of high-profile lawsuits, multiple government investigations, and the termination of several senior executives.’
Hazelbaker concluded that ‘among other things, we have invested heavily in safety, developing many of the technologies that are now industry standard and publishing a comprehensive report of the most serious safety incidents.
‘As part of our commitment to become a zero-emission mobility platform by 2040, we’re investing $800m to help drivers switch to electric vehicles and reporting on our progress along the way. We maintain gender and racial pay equity and have tied our senior executives’ compensation to our diversity goals.
‘We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values. Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.’