True Story: When the app which is essentially your boss stands you down

Friday, 11 November 2022

Many rideshare drivers across Aotearoa have reported being robo-suspended.

True Story is proudly brought to you by Disney+

Turning up for work one Wednesday night recently, ready to earn some money, rideshare driver Alice got a shock: she was robo-suspended.

The app which is effectively her boss had stood her down.

And it was all because of a system glitch hitting many other drivers in New Zealand too.

“The safety robot was running amok and sent me 30 or so warnings and threats and then, finally, suspended me,” says Alice, who did not want her surname used.

* Explainer: What happens now that four NZ Uber drivers have been ruled employees?

* The judgment that sent a 'seismic wave' through Uber

True Story is a new current affairs podcast from Adam Dudding and Eugene Bingham, the makers of the smash-hit Stuff podcast The Commune.

Alice spoke to Stuff’s new podcast, True Story, for its first episode, My Boss is a Robot.

The episode details the experiences of rideshare drivers for the likes of Uber, Ola and Zoomy, whose living relies on an almost entirely automated system via the apps they use.

When using Uber, for instance, the drivers start each shift by logging onto the app which then gives them details of rides, tells them where to go, is the system through which they are paid, and through which they have to complain if there is a problem.

Alice’s “robo-suspension” in October was from the Ola platform. A fatigue management system designed to prevent drivers from working too long started randomly forcing drivers to stop, even though they hadn’t clocked up excessive hours.

“The software is supposed to time drivers out after 13 hours of work,” Alice told True Story. “But it can’t seem to do basic addition … taking me offline six hours after starting my shift. The software also locks drivers out of phoning support, automatically rejecting their calls and telling them they are on a forced break.”

Alice says when she later got through to a call centre operator, she was told the problem was with the system and it was impacting other drivers too.

Uber's court loss in October was part of a wider dispute between some businesses and unions (video first published in October).

“The Ola representative told me, ‘it's not from our side, it’s the fatigue management system that is doing the deactivations’,” says Alice.

Being stopped from working was highly disruptive and costly, she says.

“Some drivers have only a limited time in which to make their daily bread, so will miss out on the day’s pay, and some will be constrained to times much later or earlier than their usual shift. I would have had to work all night till 6am to make up the hours, but chose to forgo half a day’s pay instead.”

The problem – which has happened at least once before, in 2021 – was eventually fixed and Alice was able to return to driving. True Story approached Ola for comment, but it did not respond.

Uber says it is going to appeal the court ruling.

The frustration of having a malfunctioning software system stop you from working is typical of the problems drivers say they face with having a robot as a boss.

“It's disturbing and frightening,” says Alice.

“Also there's a lingering effect. Each time it happens, it feels worse and more frightening. I feel incredulous that in New Zealand in this day and age, we've actually got a robot with such control over my life.”

A former Uber driver, Julian Ang, told True Story that when he first started driving in Wellington in 2016 the company had a physical presence, including drop-in sites called “green light hubs”. But the hubs eventually shut down.

“So whatever sort of human-to-human contact that we used to have was all limited to, ‘you need to log this through the app’.”

Ang was a party to an Employment Court case in which four Uber drivers sought to be declared employees rather than contractors. Last month, Chief Employment Court judge Christina Inglis ruled in the drivers’ favour, but Uber says it is going to appeal.

Ang told True Story one of the reasons he was attracted to being a rideshare driver was the appeal of being your own boss. But he says that in time, he came to realise that wasn’t true: terms were always dictated by Uber’s requirements.

“Sometimes you could log on [to the app] and there could be a change in your terms and conditions and you just have to accept it if you want to keep driving on the platform.

“Otherwise it's like, ‘well, bugger off, too bad, find another job’.

“We, as so-called driver partners, had no say in anything.”

Nureddin Abdurahman, a part-time Uber driver who was also a party to the court case, says he hated the fact he’d essentially had a robot as a boss.

“If there is evil, I think that is my boss,” says Abdurahman. ”If there was the evil that made Adam to be kicked out of heaven, that was my boss. I really, really hate it.”

However, he says he is like many drivers who rely on the platforms for income.

True Story approached Uber for comment. A spokesperson in Sydney said the company was committed to improving conditions for drivers.

“Gig workers play an important role in our communities and economy,” says the spokesperson. “We want to improve the quality of on-demand work while preserving the flexibility and autonomy gig workers tell us they value. We are committed to industry-wide reform.”

True Story is a new current affairs podcast from Adam Dudding and Eugene Bingham, the makers of Stuff’s smash-hit podcast, The Commune. Each episode of season one features a different story and will be released weekly for the next six weeks on all podcast platforms.