About 2,000 Uber drivers in Zagreb and the surrounding area will go on strike from Sunday and are checking out of the popular mobile app until further notice. Iva Filipović, secretary of SRDP (Union of Digital Platform Workers), confirmed this to Večernji List on Friday.
The reason for the strike is the delay in driver payment from Uber, which happens more and more frequently. However, the drivers lost patience this week, and the details were revealed to Večernji List by Filipović, who also has her own business, is registered for the application as a driver and in that sense represents Uber’s partner.
“Uber usually pays its drivers every Tuesday for the work done last week. No driver in Croatia had money in their account on Tuesday, so we expected it to be on Friday since there was such a bang the previous few times when payments were late. This has started to happen more and more often. We need to feed our families, aggregators and Uber partners can’t pay their employees’ salaries. So it’s a chain reaction that entails a number of negative consequences. Drivers have been accustomed to weekly payments for years and so adjust their a life and work that is hard and risky,” says Filipović for Večernji List, adding that the driver’s anger is caused by the lack of any human communication.
“Uber’s policy is to brag about social sensitivity and call its drivers partners. However, we feel like digital slaves who don’t really even know who they work for. There is simply no way to talk to a competent person. We don’t know who these people are. The only possibility of communication is through the application, and we all receive an automated response from the customer service,” claims Filipović.
He says that the strike will definitely take place, regardless of whether the money will be paid to drivers that day.
“It is very important to send a message. That’s what we want. For now, we only know that the headquarters of Uber in Croatia is on Radnička Street in Zagreb. More than 2,000 drivers are active in the wider Zagreb area. The vast majority of them will turn off the application, and an arrival to Radnička Street has been organized, from which we will not leave until a competent person comes out of the administrative building to talk to us. We want to know what is going on, we want a humane approach. We are not robots,” Filipovic told Vecernji List, adding that the exact number of drivers outside Zagreb who will join the strike will be known on Sunday.
Večernji List sent an inquiry to the Croatian branch of Uber.
“Our partner-drivers are aware of the situation of payment delays due to an error in the local bank system. Once again we apologize for the technical problem, the earnings will be visible to drivers in their bank accounts no later than Monday. We are completely committed to our community of drivers and we are working to resolve this situation as soon as possible,” Uber told Vecernji List.
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