UN Women and Uber – Selling Principles to the Lowest Bidder

UN Women and Uber – Selling Principles to the Lowest Bidder

Brussels, 13 March 2015 (ITUC OnLine): The ITUC has described an announcement by the United Nations gender body UN Women of a partnership with the Uber company to “create” a million jobs for women as undermining the very principles of the United Nations. Uber has come under fire in countries around the world for undermining incomes and working conditions of women and men who drive taxis for a living, and faced a string of accusations of union-busting, breaches of privacy, and risks to health and safety.

Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said “Uber does not create jobs – it replaces existing, regulated, taxi jobs with low-paid, precarious and exploitative work. It seems that UN Women is selling its principles to, in this case, the lowest bidder. This important UN agency should not be hijacked by big business – it should be engaging with trade unions, the organisations that represent working women and help unions in their every-day fight for women’s rights and decent jobs.

Many taxi drivers have enough difficulty making ends meet already. Replacing a million existing jobs with the kind of employment arrangements that Uber requires will marginalise women, driving them into one of the most aggressive examples of informalisation of work in existence today. The international trade union movement calls on UN Women to recognise that it has made a bad mistake and stop itself being used as a public relations tool for a corporation which cares only for its profits.”

To read more: http://www.ituc-csi.org/ituc-statement-on-un-women-and?var_mode=calcul

ENDS

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