guardian | “Got chased by a mob of taxi drivers who threw rocks,” tweeted the singer Courtney Love from Charles de Gaulle airport. She was caught up in what is becoming a global trend: the backlash against Uber.
French taxi drivers were protesting on Thursday at vehicles operated by
drivers working for the Californian business, which functions like a
taxi-hire company, but via smartphones and without directly employing
its drivers.
The taxi drivers were protesting at seeing their livelihoods
threatened: it costs more than €100,000 (£71,000) for a taxi licence in
Paris. Uber
drivers, though, pay nothing, using their own cars and just paying a
proportion of their takings to the company for the rides they pick up.
There has been similar anger, though not riots, in New York where taxi
licences, called “medallions”, can cost a million dollars. And
regulators, courts and police have been raising concerns around the
world, too.
It’s been a tough week for Uber. The protests in France, where
UberPop (as it is called locally) has been declared illegal yet still
operates, came just a week after California’s Labor Commission
decided that Uber drivers there were employees, not contractors – a
distinction that could impose significant costs and responsibilities.
Uber had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.
Uber’s troubles signal a troubled birth for a 21st-century concept:
the sharing economy. In this brave new world, untapped capacity – such
as idle cars and rooms – is made available for hire, increases
efficiency and lowers the price of those goods and services.
It is not just Uber that is facing resistance over the sharing
phenomenon. Paris is also the scene of another collision between a
company from the sharing economy and the authorities: about 2% of all
apartment units in the city are available for rent through AirBnB,
which connects apartment owners and short-term renters. With 40,000
listings at the start of April, it’s the company’s largest market in
Europe, ahead of London with just under 25,000 and Barcelona with
16,600.
