As Seattle Uber Drivers Try to Unionize, the Company Doubles Down on a Scare Campaign

Summary

During a recent Seahawks game, an Uber television ad aired; it featured a driver who says he struggled to find work and would have likely ended up homeless if it hadn’t been for Uber. The driver, identified only as Maurice, states: “My security is in my flexibility to run my business the way I choose to run it.” Then he warns: “With the Teamsters union, I’d no longer be able to do that.”

In another ad, Toni, an Uber driver and former chemo patient, says, “If the city forces collective bargaining onto Uber drivers, you effectively turn us into taxicabs… When you kill the industry by forcing a union, there’s nothing left to organize. The industry’s gone.”