Uber’s update to this system may be delivered via smartphone, but as the California state assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez recently tweeted, it could still be “f*cking feudalism”. Peonage, which was used as a replacement for outright slavery in the post-civil-war American south, is a system of economic exploitation in which workers are compelled to work to pay off debts to their employers. But given the company’s business model, the extreme financial pressures it is facing, and its history of exploiting workers, we should fear the possibility that its loan program will create a cruel new form of digital peonage. We don’t yet know anything about the terms of Uber’s loans. But the loans are clearly part of a broader push the company is making, through its new Uber Money subsidiary, into giving drivers access to financial products such as bank accounts and credit cards.Īccess, however, tends to come at a price. The program, versions of which have already been rolled out in India, Brazil and Peru, has not yet been launched in the US, and Uber has declined to discuss its details in the press. Drivers would presumably repay these debts by, well, driving for Uber. What Uber was testing with drivers appears to be a payday loan program in which the company will offer drivers short-term credit of up to $500 or more.
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