Critics claim Uber service illegal and unsafe

The controversial transportation application service Uber has come under increasing pressure and opposition from governments and local taxi service companies, who claim that its unlicensed drivers are unsafe and illegal.
2014 and 2015 saw the formation of large-scale opposition rallies against Uber’s operations, with protests staged in Germany, France, Spain, England, China, and many other countries. Some of the protests have resulted in attacks on Uber drivers or their cars, such as those in France in January 2014.
Uber contends that it is not a traditional taxi service company. It is instead a technology-driven service that can be used to request a driver. As it does not operate as a taxi service, it is therefore not required to adhere to taxi regulations.
To further distance themselves from the taxi service model, the company does not acknowledge their staff as employees, but rather contractors – meaning that they are exempt from enjoying standard employment rights such as stable working hours. This technicality prompted the USA to issue new guidelines in 2015, saying that anyone who is “economically dependent” on their employer should be treated as an employee.
Those protesting against Uber’s practices argue that the company provides the same basic service as a taxi company but is exempt from the same regulations (including pricing restrictions) because of a technicality. Many also claim that the company is destroying traditional livelihoods through their discriminatory standards of conduct.
To make matters worse, Uber has also developed a reputation for conducting both covert and explicit operations against competitor companies, journalists critical of the company, and even its own dissenting employees or drivers.
In January 2014, Uber had to apologize after it was found to be encouraging its employees to order fake rides from a newly-established competing service, Gett. Later in the same year, Senior VP Emil Michael issued an apology after publicly suggesting that Uber hire a team of researchers to investigate the personal lives of journalists who criticized the company.
Daphne Kasriel-Alexander, a consumer trends consultant at Euromonitor, provided a summary of the alleged problems with Uber by saying that the company “has been accused of everything from having a reckless attitude towards safety, to putting cab drivers out of work. I believe that this is because the Uber taxi ride-sharing app bypasses traditional cab companies and traditional ways of working, along with the accompanying regulatory mechanisms of the industry, including tariff bands.” Staff Reporter