In media reports, representatives of a delivery worker alliance and labor union take pictures of themselves outside the Taipei District Prosecutors Office with documents showing the criminal complaints they filed against Uber and Uber Eats Taiwan for allegedly underpaying their workers.
Several criminal complaints were filed against Uber Eats Taiwan, accusing it of not giving the right amount of compensation to its workers, despite handling multiple deliveries. Even Uber’s lead, Dara Khosrowshahi, was the subject of the complaint.
Aside from Khosrowshahi, Uber Eats Taiwan chairperson Michelle Georgette Parker, the platform’s Taiwan general manager, and several local corporate representatives, were also in the complaint.
An alliance advocating Taiwan food delivery industry rights and the National Delivery Industry Union accused the food delivery app of knowingly adopting an illegal payment formula for “stacked orders,” wherein couriers deliver two or more orders in a single trip. Despite this scope of the work, the complaint stated they were being underpaid.
What’s worse, they were allegedly made to believe they were being compensated correctly, according to the Delivery Workers’ Rights Protection and Delivery Platform Management Act, which Uber Eats pledged to comply with.
Under the current law, a minimum payment of $1.40 per order should be given to the delivery staff, and they should also be compensated based on the delivery time at a rate of around $8 each hour, and the courier, therefore, should be receiving around $7.
However, this isn’t the case. Rather, Uber Eats is calculating the payment depending merely on the longer delivery time of 29 minutes, not the combined time spent on both of these orders, and the workers were merely receiving around $3.7. Still not right.
Spokesperson of the alliance and also a delivery worker affected by those, Su Po-hao, stated that Uber Eats went on paying that amount, despite being aware of the law, which took effect last July 21st.
Also, the chairman of the union, Chen Yu-an cited they were being underpaid despite spending 25 minutes completing the delivery of the first order, and 29 minutes for the second in a single trip.
Since Uber Eats Taiwan is being presented in violation of the law, the company may be fined between as much as $622 to $3,110 for each violation of the law. More fines could be imposed if they fail to pay their workers right despite this complaint.
Uber Eats Taiwan responded to these complaints, but defended the way they do it. Uber Eats stated that its payment formula for stacked deliveries was based upon the total time a courier actually spends completing combined trips, not counting the overlapping delivery times several times, which they said how the delivery workers were calculated.
They added that under its formula, each order in a stacked delivery was still covered by the minimum compensation guarantees under the latest law, which means they follow it, nonetheless.
What do you think about this exchange of statements? Who’s right, and who’s wrong? Connect with the delivery of food community by creating that account on Ridesharingforum.com now.