Mother Jones: Fed-Up Uber Drivers Aim to Disrupt Super Bowl 50—With Their Own Mobile App

[FrodosPet]

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/02/uber-strike-united-app-super-bowl-50

—By Josh Harkinson | Fri Feb. 5, 2016 6:00 AM EST

A disruptive smartphone app turned Uber into a $50 billion global juggernaut. Now a group of disgruntled Uber drivers, with the help of their own smartphone app, aims to kneecap the car-hailing service precisely when and where it will be most in demand: Super Bowl Sunday in the Bay Area.

For Uber, the stakes are high. The big game is in Santa Clara, about an hour from Uber's San Francisco headquarters. The company has chipped in $250,000 to $500,000 in cash and services to sponsor the Super Bowl Host Committee, according to Quartz. In return, it gets to be the first ride-sharing service allowed to access a Super Bowl game. It will even have exclusive pick-up and drop-off zones at the stadium—a coup for Uber's marketing department, assuming the company doesn't fall on its face.

And that's where Uber's labor problems may come back to haunt it. The drivers, who often make less than minimum wage, are angry because the company slashed fares nationwide over the past month. On Monday, several hundred of them protested at Uber's offices in San Francisco and New York.

The group behind the San Francisco protest, United Uber Drivers, has pledged to hold a massive strike on Super Bowl Sunday, and some Uber drivers in other cities have said they will do the same in solidarity. According to the industry publication Ride Share Report, the drivers intend to slow highway traffic near the stadium and inundate the streets around crowded Super Bowl events in San Francisco.

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The transportation business, whether people or freight, is filled with corruption and disregard for drivers.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. About time the worker stood up to the megacorporation that makes profits and pays them shit.

I won't use Uber or go to Walmart, for the same reasons. They are both bad for workers.

[FrodosPet]

2. Very much so

Livery is a necessary, but horrible, industry.

[Sam_Fields]

3. I saw an interview with an Uber driver on the local news. She made $3.30 in a 12 hr day.

Good Lord.

[FrodosPet]

4. They keep adding on more and more desperate people to drive

And lowering the fares to the point that it is costing people to drive for them, once you factor in the added wear and tear on their cars.

[Midnight Writer]

5. Amazed this hasn't happened sooner. How tough can it be

to post your personal willingness to offer rides on various platforms, without cutting in a boss like Uber?

Just as Uber is out competing Taxi companies, it seems it would be child's play for a less greedy group to undercut Uber.