new York Since taking office, Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi has certainly been trying to improve the image of the driving service. However, a massive data leak is now causing the group to be caught up in its past. The data shows how Uber has been enlisting politicians and scientists for years in a multi-million dollar campaign trying to influence public opinion and the law in its own favour.
The analyzes published on Sunday evening show, among other things, the dubious methods with which the Silicon Valley company wanted to gain access to the European markets, including with the help of massive lobbying – for example to change the passenger transport law in Germany.
The FDP politician Otto Fricke, who was not in the Bundestag at the time and worked for a consulting firm, arranged meetings with politicians, including the then Federal Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt and State Secretary Dorothee Bär (both CSU). The aim was to change the passenger transport law, writes the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, citing the documents.
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In the documents, Uber representatives described Dobrindt as “open-minded and impartial.” The politician explained to the SZ that he was not aware of a targeted lobbying campaign with him as the declared “main goal”. In meetings with Uber representatives, he only described the legal situation and referred to existing or ongoing court proceedings.
Uber founder Kalanick himself had to resign after several scandals, but became a billionaire with the IPO. Uber’s backers included Menlo Ventures, Google Ventures, Microsoft, Fidelity and Softbank’s Vision Fund, among others.
Lobbying for a change in the law
With capital from well-known financiers, Kalanick has pursued aggressive global expansion for years. However, the driving service met with resistance in numerous countries, and authorities and courts often banned the service in whole or in part. Also in Germany.
The Uber Pop app was particularly criticized: it was intended to enable private individuals to find passengers and take them with them in their own cars, even without a passenger transport permit. That was a violation of the Passenger Transport Act, as several courts found — which didn’t stop Uber from offering the service for a few more months.
Uber now abides by the law. The group only works with drivers who have a passenger transport license. However, this service is only available in the major cities of Berlin, Munich, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Cologne and Hamburg.
Incidentally, an amendment to the Passenger Transport Act has been in effect since 2021. It does not offer major improvements for new mobility providers such as Uber: they are only allowed to accept orders that were previously ordered via app or telephone. “Taxis are still the only ones who can spontaneously pick up passengers,” said the Federal Ministry of Transport. The industry has therefore retained parts of its legally protected monopoly.
Macron’s personal commitment
Uber is also said to have exercised massive political influence in other countries. According to the documents, the incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron in particular is said to have personally campaigned for Uber during his time as Finance Minister.
There are said to have been four meetings between Uber boss Kalanick and Macron, reports the French newspaper “Le Monde”. A secret agreement is said to have come about, which is said to have made Uber’s business easier.
As finance minister, Macron “naturally exchanged views with numerous companies,” said a spokesman for the president. It was also about lifting certain administrative or regulatory blocks.
On the other hand, Uber had lost his teeth to Olaf Scholz, then mayor of the city of Hamburg. He is said to have insisted that the drivers get the minimum wage. A top manager then labeled him “a true comedian,” writes the Guardian.
Economist Haucap: Opinion against payment
Last but not least, Uber tried to influence the discourse with studies and reports from scientists. Renowned economists from MIT and Princeton publish essays that made the car service provider appear as a good employer.
In Germany, Uber hired the well-known economist and former head of the Monopolies Commission, Justus Haucap, to write a study with results favorable to the company and bring them to the media and scientific journals.
When asked by the ARD editors, a Haucap employee said that the process “can no longer be understood today”. However, it can be ruled out that “the editorial and content sovereignty for the contribution lay with Uber”.
>> Read about this: How Uber used well-known scientists for itself
However, emails contained in the Uber files suggest that Haucap has agreed with Uber to publish the pleasing results in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ). A corresponding article appeared there in 2014. Haucap is a member of the Board of Trustees of the FAZIT Foundation, which aims to ensure the journalistic independence of the FAZ.
As the Handelsblatt reported back in 2017, in 2015 Haucap published a study on mobility markets commissioned by Uber in the specialist journal “List Forum”, which it publishes itself. In the same year he published a positive article on Uber and other companies in the “sharing economy” in the magazine “Wirtschaftsdienst”. One looked in vain for a reference to the parallel commissioned work for Uber in the Wirtschaftsdienst article. When asked, Haucap explained at the time that the disclosure had been inadvertently omitted.
Haucap’s commissioned works were part of a massive international campaign to steer scientific discourse in the spirit of Uber. To do this, the company, which had a massive PR budget at its disposal, hired some of the most renowned economists from the leading universities, such as Alan Krueger, Joshua Angrist and Robert Metcalfe. With data provided by Uber and with Uber managers as co-authors, they wrote studies that invariably had favorable results for Uber.
In particular, it countered widespread criticism of poor pay and poor conditions for Uber drivers. Unlike other such commissioned studies, thanks to the authors’ big names and connections, these were published in the most prestigious journals, ensuring that they are widely cited and continue to define scholarly discourse to this day.
Uber had emergency buttons during raids
In addition, the documents show that Uber apparently had technical emergency tools to prevent investigators from doing their job. With this type of digital “kill switch”, Uber is said to have made it difficult for authorities to access important data during searches. For example, during a raid in Amsterdam, the company’s own computer systems were blocked, according to the “Uber Files”. That was personally ordered by Kalanick, as the Guardian quotes from emails.
The then Uber boss “never authorized actions that would impede justice in any country,” said his spokesman. He also “never suggested that Uber should benefit from violence at the expense of driver safety”.
In addition, the founder explicitly demanded that Uber drivers deliberately go near protests by taxi drivers, where there was a risk that they would end violently.
Among other things, the documents document how Uber organized a large counter-demonstration after protests against the company in France in 2016, with “15,000 drivers” and “50,000 customers”, as Kalanick wrote in chat messages published by the “Washington Post”.
He therefore downplayed the risk of possible aggressive behavior on the part of the other side: “If we have 50,000 passengers, they will not and cannot do anything.” At the same time, he seemed to take risks: “I think it’s worth it. Violence guarantees success.”
Uber stock has had little reaction to Uber Files so far
Uber manager Jill Hazelbaker wrote to the “Washington Post”: “There are many things that our then boss said almost a decade ago that we would not tolerate today.” But nobody at Uber was ever happy about violence against a driver . Kalanick’s spokesman also replied that he had never suggested that Uber capitalize on violence against drivers.
“We have never made excuses for past behavior and have no intention of doing so. Instead, we’re asking the public to rate us on what we’ve done over the past five years and what we plan to do in the future.”
Uber’s share price has lost around half its value since the beginning of the year.
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