Uber is another $ 20 million poorer after running the driver's license

Uber is a company that dictates how a large number of car owners pick up passengers, where they take them, how they take them there, the condition of the vehicle they get in, and the salary they earn but it does not consider these drivers to be their employees.

As you can imagine, this has led to quite a few lawsuits.

A class action, which began as a challenge to how it classifies drivers, but ultimately focused on Uber's attempt to resolve conflicts with drivers outside a courtroom, was such a suit. Settled in California's Northern District Court, it will cost the ridesharing company at least $ 20 million, pending a judge's signature. ($ 5 million in legal fees is also allegedly sought from Uber.)

Payments after more than five years of trial, including the certification of the original class that included 385,000 drivers, are likely to be minimal for the approximately 13,000 remaining plaintiffs. The decision to settle the case, Conner v Uber, will not be based on similar cases of driver status as full-time employees versus contractors, or change the company's policy of burying arbitration agreements deep in the terms of service agreements of which The drivers probably actually read.

For context, drivers, customers, and government suffocate with Uber with a regularity that can only be startling if you have completely avoided any history of the company over the past six years. It paid out $ 84 million to drivers in Massachusetts, $ 10 million over driver background checks, another $ 10 million to female software engineers in their ranks for allegedly discriminatory practices, $ 20 million to put an FTC complaint that overhyped potential earnings. For drivers, a handful of hundreds of thousands of dollars for allegedly underpaying drivers and discrimination against sight-loss individuals, $ 20 million for sending text message spam no one asked, and $ 148 million for a data breach.

Finally, another $ 20 Million – not even $ 1,500 per driver before legal fees, after half a decade in court – is just another blow on the wrist of a company with an outline of allegedly skirt labor laws and doing generally what the hell they feel about, to the detriment of their workers and the places it runs.