Uber is currently confronting another legal dispute in Europe concerning its use of automated decision-making processes.

The App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) initiated legal proceedings yesterday in a Dutch court, challenging the ride-hailing company’s practice of terminating drivers through automated systems – commonly referred to as ‘robo-firing’ – which identifies potential fraudulent behavior and leads to driver dismissal based on that assessment.

According to European Union legislation, individuals subjected to decisions made solely by automated means are entitled to request a human review of those decisions. Specifically, Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) grants individuals the right to avoid being subject to a decision based exclusively on automated processing when it produces significant legal effects or similarly impacts them.

The ADCU’s claim asserts that Uber drivers in the United Kingdom and Portugal have been incorrectly accused of “fraudulent activity” as identified by Uber’s systems, and subsequently dismissed without any opportunity to appeal the decision.

According to a press release detailing the legal action, “In each instance, drivers were terminated after Uber stated its systems had detected fraudulent activity. The drivers strongly deny any involvement in fraudulent practices, and Uber has never reported these concerns to law enforcement. Furthermore, Uber has not provided the drivers with access to the evidence against them, nor allowed them to contest or appeal the termination.”

A representative for Uber stated that the cases of the drivers in question underwent manual review by specialized personnel before their accounts were terminated.

However, the ADCU argues that Uber employs an excessively broad definition of ‘fraud’ to circumvent its obligations to worker’s rights, effectively disguising performance-related dismissals. They point to the company’s ‘Community Guidelines’, which define ‘fraud’ to encompass actions such as declining ride requests and deliberately logging out of the app to benefit from increased surge pricing.

Uber’s guidelines regarding fraud state that the company “is consistently monitoring for fraudulent activity by both riders and drivers who attempt to exploit our systems.” The guidelines further specify that behaviors potentially leading to account deactivation for Uber drivers include: “intentionally increasing the duration or distance of a trip; accepting trips with no intention of completing them, or prompting riders to cancel; creating fake rider or driver accounts for fraudulent purposes; submitting false fees or charges, such as fabricated cleaning fees; and knowingly accepting or completing fraudulent or fabricated trips.”

The union reports that the first driver, located in London, was immediately dismissed after Uber’s systems flagged “irregular trips associated with fraudulent activities” – without any explanation or chance for appeal.

The second driver, also based in London, received a similar dismissal after Uber alleged its systems detected “the installation and use of software designed to manipulate the Driver App.” The driver was not provided with further details regarding the accusations and was denied the opportunity to appeal.

A third driver, situated in Birmingham, experienced a comparable termination without appeal, following a notification from Uber that their systems had identified “a consistent pattern of improper use of the Uber application… which resulted in a negative experience for all parties.”

A fourth driver, based in Lisbon, Portugal, had their account deactivated after Uber’s systems detected “the repeated occurrence of irregular activities while using the Uber App.”

Uber declined to discuss the specifics of the individual drivers involved in the ADCU’s challenge, but stated that it does not recognize any new allegations based on the press release, and is awaiting further information from the courts.

“Uber provides the personal data and information that individuals are legally entitled to request. We will provide explanations when we are unable to supply certain data, such as when it does not exist or when disclosure would violate the rights of another individual under GDPR. As a standard procedure, the drivers in this case were deactivated only after manual reviews by our specialist team,” the company explained in a statement.

We also inquired whether Uber conducts manual reviews of all cases where its algorithm identifies drivers as potentially engaging in fraudulent activity, but had not received a response at the time of writing.

The ADCU is encouraging former Uber drivers from the UK and across the European Economic Area who have been dismissed under similar allegations of ‘fraudulent activity’ to register on its website to participate in the collective legal action, which they intend to partially fund through a crowdjustice campaign.

In July, the union supported another challenge to Uber’s algorithms, focusing on the use of profiling and data-driven algorithms for driver management, and invoking the GDPR’s data access rights.

Last month, the union also filed a similar challenge against India-based ride-hailing platform Ola.