Uber CEO Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Price Fixing (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will go to court over price fixing claims after he initially tried to get the lawsuit dismissed. U.S. district court judge in New York ruled Kalanick has to face the class of passengers alleging that he conspired with drivers to set fares using an algorithm, including hiking rates during peak hours with so-called surge pricing. According to Reuters, district court judge Jed Rakoff ruled the plaintiffs "plausibly alleged a conspiracy" to fix pricing and that the class action could also pursue claims the set rates led to the demise [of] other services, like Sidecar.

Comments

Independent Contractors

[Anonymous Coward]

Employees of a single company, by definition, can't collude to fix prices. But independent contractors sure can.

Looks like that whole "uber drivers are independent contractors not employees" thing has a lot of unintended consequences that aren't anywhere near as beneficial for Uber as they assumed.

Re: While Uber has definitely engaged...

[TheRaven64]

Presumably they are free to set their own prices if working independently, but then they wouldn't be covered by Uber's insurance or booked via their app. I think the problem is likely to boil down to Uber's desire to have the drivers treated as independent contractors. 'CEO conspires with employees to set the price for services' isn't something that would make the news, it's what companies do. But if Uber is trying to pitch itself (to avoid being regulated as a taxi company) as a simple matchmaking service that pairs customers with independent drivers then also setting prices makes it look a lot more like a company that's offering a taxi service.