Uber faces backlash amid scandals

Uber released its long-awaited security report yesterday, revealing the company documented nearly 6,000 reports of sexual assault — both by drivers and passengers — in 2017 and 2018, as well as 19 deaths from Uber-related physical assaults in that time (not necessarily between driver and rider).

It’s difficult to know how those numbers compare with those from taxis or Uber’s biggest competitor, Lyft, which says it will release its own report but didn’t specify when. The New York Times notes that the New York Police Department recorded 533 sex crimes and rapes on its transit system last year. Uber says just 0.00002 percent of trips on its platform involved reports of sexual assault in the last two years.

New York City is giving a raise to Uber and Lyft drivers.

On Tuesday, city officials passed the nation’s first minimum pay rate for drivers who work for ride-hailing apps, ending a contentious two-year battle to make sure drivers can earn a decent living.

New York City is cracking down on Uber and other app-based ride-hailing services that have clogged the city with thousands of extra cars, while contributing to poverty-level wages for thousands of drivers.

On Wednesday, the City Council approved several bills to regulate for-hire vehicles, which includes a cap on the number of drivers who can drive for Uber and Lyft, and establishes minimum pay rates to ensure drivers can make a living. The bills also require the app-based companies to report details about each trip, including the duration, cost, driver earnings, and the company’s commission.

The head of human resources at Uber has stepped down from her position, following a series of workplace scandals that have rocked the Silicon Valley tech company during her tenure. It’s the latest shakeup at the company, which in recent years has been jolted by multiple discrimination complaints and the resignation of co-founder Travis Kalanick, who had served as CEO.

The departure of Uber’s HR director, Liane Hornsey, was announced on Tuesday in an email to employees, according to the Wall Street Journal. The email, sent by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, did not mention the reason for Hornsey’s departure, but people involved in the decision told the Journal it was related to her department’s mishandling of employees’ racial discrimination complaints. An internal investigation reportedly showed that Hornsey had ignored multiple anonymous complaints about the mistreatment of employees of color at the ride-hailing firm.

People think of Uber as a big success story. But it’s not. At least not yet.

Uber dominates the fast-growing ride-sharing market in the United States and much of the world. But events in recent months demonstrate how tenuous that dominance still is.

It’s not unusual for a new company to lose money as it seeks market share and traction, but Uber is testing investors’ patience to a degree that’s unprecedented in the history of Silicon Valley. Uber just shared its 2016 financial results with Bloomberg, and they show that the car-hailing app lost $2.8 billion last year — and that’s excluding losses from the money-losing China division Uber sold last August. It’s a staggering sum, and with the company losing almost $1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016 alone, there seems to be no end in sight.

Uber has raised $11 billion from venture capital investors to pay the bills so far, and the company says it has $7 billion in cash on hand and can tap into a $2.3 billion credit line. But if losses continue at their recent pace, even that massive war chest will only last for about three more years.

Last fall, Uber hired Jeff Jones, Target’s former chief marketing officer, to serve as president of the company’s core ride-hailing business, with a mandate to improve relationships with Uber drivers and counteract the company’s increasingly negative public image. But Jones couldn’t solve those problems, and over the weekend he resigned in a way that will exacerbate them, telling Recode’s Kara Swisher and Johana Bhuiyan that “the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber.”

Jones’s resignation is the latest blow in what’s been a brutal 2017 for the high-flying transportation startup, with problems ranging from a consumer boycott sparked by Uber’s participation in a Donald Trump advisory council to a Google lawsuit alleging that Uber’s key self-driving car technology was stolen, from serious sexual harassment allegations to the revelation of a secret program to foil local law enforcement.

Last month, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler rocked the company with a blog post alleging systematic gender discrimination at the ride-hailing giant. Fowler wrote that her boss propositioned her for sex almost immediately after she started her job. And she says that when she reported this to the human resources department, they dismissed it because her boss was a “high performer.” According to Fowler, this was just the first of several instances of blatant sex discrimination she witnessed at the company.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick moved quickly to address the issue. He organized a five-member panel to investigate Fowler’s complaints and larger questions about Uber’s treatment of women. But not everyone was satisfied with this response. Critics such as early Uber investors Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein faulted Kalanick for stacking the panel with insiders, including an Uber lawyer, an Uber HR executive, and Uber board member Arianna Huffington.

For years, Uber’s app has had a secret feature designed to thwart local government efforts to stop drivers from driving without a taxi license, according to the New York Times. The feature, known as “Greyballing,” blocks suspected city officials from calling drivers. When blacklisted officials logged in to Uber, they would be shown a fake map populated with cars that didn’t actually exist. If officials hailed these imaginary cars, the ride would mysteriously get canceled before they got picked up.

The Greyball program was part of a cat-and-mouse game Uber has played with officials in various cities for years. Driving an unlicensed taxicab is illegal in many cities, but Uber insisted that it was simply a market maker — connecting drivers with riders — and not subject to city taxi regulations. So officials’ only option in many cases was to enforce the law against drivers: fining them or even impounding their cars if drivers were caught picking up passengers without a license.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick seems to have finally figured out that Uber’s biggest problem is Travis Kalanick. In recent weeks, the company has faced a string of controversies, including an explosive sexual harassment accusation and a high-profile lawsuit over allegedly stolen technology. Most recently, a video published by Bloomberg showed Kalanick lecturing a driver about responsibility during an argument over Uber’s falling fares.

In an email to Uber employees that was sent out on Tuesday afternoon, Kalanick acknowledged that his behavior in the video was unacceptable, and that he needed help to change. “I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up,” he wrote. “This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.”

Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer, wrote a blog post last week detailing the sexist treatment she endured during her year at the company. Among other things, she said that she was sexually harassed by her boss over company chat and that her complaints to HR were dutifully dismissed.

“When I reported the situation,” Fowler writes, “I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man’s first offense, and that they wouldn’t feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to.”

The last week must have been one of the worst in Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s life. It began with viral allegations of toxic misogyny in the company’s ranks and continued with a high-profile public apology and an internal investigation launched from the executive suite.

Then came the corporate espionage allegations, and lawsuit, that could kneecap a key piece of Uber’s future plans.

Google just filed a lawsuit against Uber that will have huge implications for the future of self-driving car technology.

Google has been working on self-driving cars since 2009, and for a long time the company practically had the field to itself. But in the past couple of years, the market has gotten a lot more crowded.

A prominent engineer named Susan Fowler has penned an explosive blog post describing her year as an Uber employee. She alleges that between her hiring in November 2015 and her departure in January 2017, she experienced a truly remarkable string of sexist incidents that — if proven — would give her grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit, several times over.

Fowler alleges that on her first day on her new team, her boss propositioned her for sex over company chat. When she reported the incident to HR, she says, he did not lose his job because it was his first offense and the man was a “high performer.” She says she later discovered this was untrue: Other women had reported the same manager to HR for similar offenses.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has withdrawn from Donald Trump’s economic advisory council, according to reports by the New York Times and Recode. The announcement came in an internal company email after a week of protests by advocates of immigration rights.

On Saturday night, New York taxi drivers announced a boycott of John F. Kennedy Airport to protest Donald Trump’s controversial immigration order. Uber chose to continue serving the airport — albeit with surge pricing disabled — a move that critics saw as crossing picket lines. A social media protest under the #DeleteUber hashtag quickly went viral, prompting many customers to quit the ride-hailing app.

On Saturday night, the hashtag #DeleteUber began trending on social media. Enraged by Uber’s response to Donald Trump’s controversial immigration order, customers demanded that Uber delete their accounts, and they went on Facebook and Twitter to encourage their friends to do the same thing.

The protest was inspired by Uber’s decision to disable surge pricing around New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in response to a taxi drivers’ strike spurred by the Trump order — something Uber routinely does during emergencies to avoid being seen as profiting from tragedy.