Uber’s New Emergency Assistance Button Calls 000 In A Second
You can let your family know where you are too.
Uber is rolling out an emergency assistance button on its Australian app as the ride-share giant deals with bad press coverage over allegations of sexual assault. Yep, it’s a Tuesday!
The shield-shaped button will direct riders onto a 000 call. You’ll also see an estimated address, which you can pass on to emergency services.
The emergency assistance button will be as part of the “Safety Toolkit”: a section of the Uber app that will also include an option to share your location with “trusted contacts”. Uber says riders will be able to see details about their driver’s background check, and insurance protections right there in the app.
The toolkit was rolled out in the United States back in April.
Over the weekend a fake Uber driver was charged with the sexual assault of two women in Brisbane. At the end of last month, a Sydney Uber driver was charged with sexually assaulting a teenager.
Around the world, Uber faces questions over how it pays its drivers. On Monday, Singapore’s competition watchdog fined Uber and Grab (an Uber competitor popular in Asia) just over $13 million.
In May, The Greens announced a policy that would require Uber to receive basic entitlements such as a minimum wage.
In January, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that three in four delivery workers surveyed said they weren’t paid minimum wage, and many didn’t have sick pay or insurance.
Companies like Uber, Deliveroo and Foodora get away with this by classifying their workers as independent contractors, rather than employees. Independent contractors often don’t get leave or penalty rates. They can also be dismissed from their jobs at any time, without warning.
Most importantly, they don’t need to be paid a minimum hourly rate. This means that delivery companies can pay workers by the delivery, rather than by the hour.
Last year, the CEO and co-founder of Uber Travis Kalanick departed amidst ongoing allegations he treated staff poorly and claims that there was a culture of sexual harassment within the company.