Uber barred from communicating with drivers in lawsuit

If the company wants to communicate, it must first consult with lawyers or the court

Uber's holiday season isn't turning out to be very merry.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco yesterday told Uber to no longer communicate with drivers without first consulting a lawyer for the drivers or the court.

"At this point we should not be communicating with the class without some authorization," he said.

The ruling is the latest in an ongoing class-action lawsuit brought against the ride-hailing company by drivers who believe they should be classified as employees, not independent contractors, and therefore should be reimbursed for expenses such as fuel, car maintenance, and smartphone bills.

Initially, the suit only included those who drove for Uber before June 2014, since those who joined after signed contracts agreeing to settle labor disputes in private arbitration. But last week a federal judge ruled that anyone who has ever driven for Uber in California, or almost 160,000 drivers, could join the suit.

Hoping to stop or at least limit the effect this could have on the suit, Uber immediately required all its drivers to sign updated agreements (via the apps) requiring them to resolve any disputes in private arbitration, not through the public court system. If you didn’t sign the new agreement, then you couldn’t keep driving for Uber, pressuring drivers to sign it no matter what.

In the small print, it was declared that you could notify Uber within 30 days if you wanted to opt out of the private arbitration requirement, but this would likely slip past most drivers unnoticed.

Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney leading the class-action suit, filed an emergency motion to stop the new agreements from going out because she believed it to be an illegal move by Uber.

Though not going as far as calling it illegal, Judge Chen appeared this week to agree with the spirit of Liss-Riordan’s motion. He told lawyers in court that he was "very concerned about what has happened" and that he believed the new contract is "likely, frankly, to engender confusion."

So, as something of a reprimand, Uber is prohibited from communicating with drivers involved in the suit as it normally might. Now it must go through the plaintiff’s lawyers or the court first. In their defense, Uber's lawyer told the judge it thought it had permission to issue the new agreement and that it was intended to clear up confusion.

I’ve sent a note to Uber to see if they will comply with the court ruling or not.

This isn’t the only labor headache experienced by Uber at the moment. Earlier this week, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved a bill enabling drivers for Uber and Lyft to unionize, making Seattle the first city in the U.S. to allow these kinds of drivers to collectively bargain for wages and labor conditions.