“Uber Business Model Is Absolutely Unsustainable”- Former Employee

Uber Files are the disclosed revelations by the Former Chief Lobbyist of Uber, Mark MacGann, who said on Wednesday that the ride-hailing company’s business model was still “absolutely” unsustainable. Though he did confess that the company is doing efforts in improving its work culture but it can’t do anything about its fundamental business model which according to him is questionable. In July, The Guardian and Le Monde newspapers also reported that Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) broke laws and secretly lobbied politicians as part of an aggressive drive to expand into new markets from 2013 to 2017.

MacGann, who led Uber’s lobbying efforts to win over governments, identified himself as the source who leaked the more than 124,000 company files. MacGann said he decided to speak out because he believed Uber knowingly flouted laws and misled people about the benefits to drivers of the company’s gig-economy model.

Uber said in July, in response to the Guardian and Le Monde reports was almost confrontational and didn’t back mouth the allegations explicitly. Rather they stayed on the back foot, and the official statement said;

“We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values.”

MacGann said;

“Uber’s current CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, and his executive team have done a lot of good things, but they have so, so far to go.”

When asked for a comment, an Uber spokesman on Wednesday referred Reuters to a 2020 New York Times opinion piece by Khosrowshahi in which he said “our current employment system is outdated and unfair.”

Khosrowshahi had said gig workers would lose the flexibility they have today if they became employees and that rides would be more expensive. The CEO wrote that workers want both flexibility and benefits and added that new laws are required to help them. MacGann told a news conference during Europe’s largest tech conference, the Web Summit, in Lisbon.

“I’m proposing that gig economy companies be required to establish benefits funds that give workers cash that they can use for the benefits they want, like health insurance or paid time off. My message to Uber is: ‘you’ve done well, (but) you can do it so much better (because) the current model is absolutely not sustainable, the core of its business model is independent contractors since everybody wants to be self-employed, everybody wants flexibility.”