Uber Drivers Logged Off to Protest in Australia

The Uber drivers logged off their application in protest on Monday morning in Australia. The drivers are protesting against the company for adding features that are designed to further underpay and shortchange them.

RideShare Drivers United (RDSU) called on the Uber drivers and asked them to turn the Uber application off between the morning hours of 7:00 am to 9:30 am in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane.

The ride-sharing drivers’ group wants the Uber drivers to stop using the “upfront pricing” in order to favour the old system as per which the drivers were paid by time and the travelled distance. It says that the upfront approach does not take into notice the unexpected and unavoidable conditions of traffic jams, passengers stop requests and/or infrequent road closures.

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Upfront pricing provides an estimate of the cost of a ride for the passenger before the ride is booked.

The RDSU also asked that Uber should permit the drivers to choose out of the UberPool system—in which the passengers share with others and raise UberX base rates by at least fifteen per cent, to account for the ever-rising increase in car maintenance and the on-road prices.

Neither Uber nor RDSU responded immediately to the requests for comments.

Back in March, upfront pricing was introduced in Australia, it was the same month when the Indian ridesharing firm—Ola was launched as a rival company in Sydney.

In the month of June, a London taxi driver said that it was searching for the possibility of bringing a class action lawsuit against Uber, some weeks after Uber escaped a possible ban in London.

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