Tough task ahead for next Uber leader

Making amends with the global network of over 2 million drivers is paramount

The huge, headline-grabbing news out of Uber this week was the resignation of its chief executive, Travis Kalanick, under pressure from the company’s board, a stunning move that capped a months-long crisis, involving sexual harassment, executive misbehaviour and Uber’s hard-nosed culture.

But amid the drama leading up to Kalanick’s forced departure, Uber made a quieter change that could represent another momentous shift for the company. On Tuesday, the company announced that passengers would soon be able to tip their drivers through the Uber app.

The change, which Uber plans to roll out nationwide next month, is a sudden reversal of long-standing company policy, and a move Uber fiercely resisted for years.

Under Kalanick, the company argued that giving riders the ability to tip drivers would create “friction” in an otherwise seamless transaction and lead to awkward interactions between riders and drivers. The company even cited a 2008 Cornell University study that found that consumers tipped black employees less generously than white employees, and suggested that adding in-app tipping would lead to racial discrimination.

The relationship between Kalanick and Uber’s global network of more than two million drivers has always been strained, to put it mildly. Drivers, who are not technically Uber employees but whose income depends largely on Uber’s policies and pricing structures, balked at Kalanick’s seeming indifference to their needs. At times, Kalanick sounded openly hostile to his company’s labour pool, musing in onstage interviews about how long it would take to replace them with self-driving cars. 

“There are a lot of things about Uber that tip the balance to the passenger side,” said Harry Campbell, a Los Angeles-based Uber driver and founder of TheRideshareGuy, a resource site for drivers. “A lot of that seemed, rightly or wrongly, to stem from Travis, and a lot of drivers blamed him for that.”

Tipping was among the hottest flash points. Uber drivers argued that they were missing out on thousands of dollars in potential earnings by not being able to receive tips inside the app. (Riders could give Uber drivers tips in cash, but few did.) Earlier this year, the Independent Drivers Guild, a group representing Uber drivers in New York City, collected more than 11,000 signatures on a petition calling for an in-app tip jar.

Then there was the video. In February, a dashboard clip of Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver was seen widely on the internet. In the video, Kalanick’s driver accused him of dropping prices on Uber rides and told the chief executive that “I’m bankrupt because of you.” Kalanick disputed the driver’s accusations and told him curtly that some people “blame everything in their life on somebody else.” Kalanick later apologised for his conduct in a staff memo, saying that it was proof that “I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up.”

Lyft, Uber’s biggest rival in the United States, has taken full advantage of the acrimony between Uber and its drivers. The company makes a point of emphasising that in-app tipping has been available to Lyft drivers since 2012, and the company has made aggressive attempts to paint itself as the more driver-friendly alternative to Uber, while trying to lure Uber’s drivers to its own platform.

© 2017 The New York Times News Service