The once-rebellious ride-hailing application faces European Union legislation that aims to overhaul its business model, but the company’s chief executive officer is pledging allegiance to the European market, doubling down on the firm’s presence.
“The European way is increasingly going to become the Uber way,” Dara Khosrowshahi told POLITICO in an interview at Uber’s European headquarters in Amsterdam. “If you characterize a European model, probably too simplistically, as responsible capitalism, capitalism with protections, we think that is an appropriate model going forward.”
The European Union is finalizing a Platform Work Directive law that could make many Uber drivers and couriers full employees. The law takes aim at the lack of social protections and benefits in the so-called gig economy driven by apps organizing short-term work stints. Uber, for its part, has long been the poster child for the regulation-defying Silicon Valley firms that created the gig economy.
Today, Uber has promised to green its fleet, improve benefits and protections for drivers and has recently launched efforts to work closely with former mortal enemies such as labor unions and taxi companies. All these initiatives started in Europe or are significantly more advanced in the EU than the U.S. or other markets.
Unlike some of its Silicon Valley peers — most prominently Facebook parent Meta — Uber is not threatening to pull out of Europe if the EU introduces new laws that hurt its business.
“It’s difficult to make up a red line,” Khosrowshahi said. “We’re not looking to make threats, we’re not looking to jump out; what we want to do is lean in.” But if Brussels were to force Uber to recognize some of its drivers as full employees “we would have to significantly reduce the number of drivers and/or couriers on the road,” he warned.
The European Union is close to adopting new rules that could reclassify up to 4.1 million gig workers as employees instead of independent contractors, granting them perks like minimum wage and holiday pay, which could impact the bottom line of companies like Uber.
If EU legislators get to a deal this year, the bloc’s member countries would have until late 2025 to turn transpose the law into national regulations and start enforcing them.
Uber has not given up its fight to change the current proposals, Khosrowshahi said: “The best outcome for us is a platform work directive that has clear rules as it relates to the nature of work and employment …We do not believe [the current version of the law] is the right answer.”
To back up its efforts in Europe, the company plans a hiring spree in the coming months and years.
The CEO was in Amsterdam on Monday with his global leadership team to sketch out the company’s strategy for the next three years. Uber’s brand-new campus on the outskirts of the central city currently houses 1,100 employees but there is office space for another 1,000.
Part of the plan is to increase engineering jobs in Europe, while reducing the number in the U.S., where tech workers are more expensive and competition is fiercer. The bulk of Uber’s payments development work is already based in Amsterdam, the company said.
