Taken from the BBC wesbite today,
Labour’s shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey has said she doesn’t use taxi app Uber because it is not “morally acceptable”.
Here is the link to the article – http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40567387
I have a few issues with this… and let me share them with you here…
- Rebecca is the ‘Shadow Business Secretary’ – which means, she’s in the Shadow Cabinet (for those outside the UK, this means she’s not in the governing party, she’s in the opposing party), and the duty of the office holder is to scrutinize the actions of the government’s Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and develop alternative policies
- What’s my issue with this? – Well, Uber has been a massive success story… in the short space of time it’s been up and running, it’s today worth over $50bn!
- This is surely the future! – And it must be doing something right…
- Rebecca and her team must look at companies such as Uber, understand and work with them… (rather than against them!)
- “Morally Unacceptable” – Basically saying, the workers are not treated right.
- What’s my issue with this? – Well, my father used to be a Taxi Driver. He worked the hours he could, and was paid for those hours. He didn’t receive any holiday pay, or sick leave.
- I appreciate Uber takes a percentage of the taxi fare… but then, you wouldn’t be getting those jobs if people weren’t using the App!
- Uber even stated that the drivers were making £15/hr after costs… and quote from Uber, “even after costs, the average driver took home well over the national living wage”
- Don’t we want Flexibility?
- I use Uber all around the World – never have I heard an Uber driver moan.
- The first thing they say is the flexibility is great! – A friend of mine even had a ‘mom’ pick him up from the office, because she’d just dropped the children off at school, saw the request come in, and thought why not make a little money before she goes home to do some housework!
- I don’t need to carry any currency, just log onto the App, request, and I can even share the journey with friends and family, so they can track that I got home safely, and I don’t need to worry about having the money to pay the driver.
On top of everything – there was a report out recently… that cash jobs such as window cleaning and decorating, were worth upto £6bn a year, which most of was untaxed! – taken from a government review of employment practices by Matthew Taylor.
You couldn’t make it up, even if you tried.
That’s right – all those ‘cash in hand’ jobs, shouldn’t really be taking place, and all ‘money exchanges’ should be logged or transparent.
How can you do that? – well, if you use a credit/debit card – that’s one way to track all money going in and out. No chance of the odd fiver or tenner going missing.
I feel, we’re not making the progress and we’re not as forward looking, as we could be… we need to focus on being more efficient, more flexible and working with companies… who are doing something right.
Okay, they may need some help, we may need to work with them and say, hey… you guys need to do this.. or take care of your employees by not making them contractors and giving them a different employment status… and this has been highlighted in the report Matthew Taylor has written for the Government.
Let’s work collaboratively… with the companies, that are developing new technology and making things easy for us, like getting a taxi, or finding a room to stay for the night… let’s share with them, what they could do, to make it a better…