Approximately 241,000 transport professionals in unmarked vehicles filed a collective lawsuit against the multinational Uber at the Amsterdam District Court this Thursday. The action was coordinated by the organization Worker Info Exchange in collaboration with European and British unions, and aims to denounce the systematic use of illegal dynamic pricing mechanisms and the arbitrary collection of private information to create income profiles of drivers.
The petition claims that the company's variable remuneration algorithm analyzes individual behaviors, including the history of accepted or declined trips and the tendency to accept reduced fares, establishing personalized payments that penalize drivers. According to legal representatives, two professionals on the same block may receive offers with disparities exceeding 15 percent to perform the same journey. Studies attached to the proceedings reveal that drivers in the United Kingdom have suffered estimated annual losses of approximately 5,770 euros since 2023.
The choice of the Amsterdam court is due to the fact that Uber's European headquarters and its data processing servers are based within Dutch jurisdiction. The initiative comes just twelve days after the Dutch Data Protection Authority imposed a fine of 825 million euros on the company, sanctioning the summary deactivation of driver accounts operated exclusively by artificial intelligence, without human intervention.
Uber categorically rejected all accusations, asserting that the calculation of compensation is not based on disciplinary history or the personal profile of operators. The company states that value discrepancies reflect objective technical parameters, such as satellite positioning, estimated wait time, and dynamic pricing mechanisms. The preliminary hearing is expected to be scheduled for the beginning of next year, and may establish binding case law for the entire platform economy in Europe.
