When Asif Hanif signed up to work for Uber just over two years ago, he says that like other new drivers he was promised he would be earning £500 a week.
However, the huge growth in the number of drivers and the forcing down of fares by the company has, he says, resulted in his pay falling by around a third since 2014. It has left him and many others often earning significantly less than the minimum wage, he claims.
The 45-year-old married father of two who lives in Hounslow, west London, declared the ruling on Friday as a victory for working people across the UK.
“When I started for Uber, I was taking home around £500 to £600 a week which sounds fine, but once I’ve paid all the costs it was much less than promised. But over the last two years, Uber has been on this massive expansion plan which has lowered our money.
“I recently took four passengers from Camden to west Ealing [a journey of 11 miles] at three o’clock in the morning for which I received £16 after Uber’s 20% commission was deducted. The company wants fares so low that passengers won’t go elsewhere, but it’s the drivers who have paid the price. The fares are just too low to live on.”
Hanif said Uber expected to him to have a new car – in his case a leased Toyota Prius Plus which costs him £375 per month. His insurance is another £177 and he has to pay for fuel and to keep both himself and the car smart, for fear of upsetting the passengers, who can give him negative feedback – and potentially end his work – at any moment.
Speaking after it had been announced that the drivers had won, Hanif said it had been an easy decision to stand up to the company and join the legal challenge.
“People say why don’t you just give up and do something else, but I’ve got the car payments. We were not asking for any special treatment or anything like that – we were just asking for the laws of Britain to be applied – nothing else. It’s great that a court has stood up for working people,” he said.
