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Monday, March 19, 2018

Is Uber a home for sexual depredators?

Por dbloggers

Sarah is going inside an Uber cab. She’s a usual client of the respectful taxi service across the country. She has never had an incident. Never has she heard about a sexual assault. But all will be different for Sarah. There is a sexual depredator disguised as taxi driver behind the wheel. Sarah is a fiction character for this line but it could be the name of one of the nine women that have been assaulted in the United States inside an Uber´s car. Despite the important company accused of silence the assaulted women, at the same time they encourage all women to talk if they have had a violent experience with Uber cars.

The company wants to improve their services and protect women, with this filed motion Uber reforms their system. Nevertheless, Uber is pushing women to solve sexual assault cases behind Uber closed doors. They blame riders of being silentand argued argument many females could have stop that kind of behave otherwise.

The company shield behind the excuse that riders agreed to confidentially arbitrate all disputes when they signed up for the ride-share service and thus have no right to file a lawsuit. According to a former lawyer, arbitration clauses could avoid victims to move forward with lawsuit, which is very comfortable for companies and serial sexual depredators that can keep their job and add new victims to their list.

Uber’s lawyers relay on legal gaps, which will allow them to go out unharmed. Since last year American jobs and workplaces have been under national spotlight. #MeToo movement and sexual scandals revealed a lot of sexual misconduct that happened in one of the supposedly fancy and glamorous workplaces in the world: Hollywood. But after Harvey Weinstein’s case, many women made public the issues that now touch every workplace across the nation.

Susan Fowler, one of Uber’s engineers who is against sexual harassment, agrees that tech industry and others are dominated by males. The arbitrary agreements are a way to attempt against women rights. Women see themselves unprotected and forced to accept and sign arbitration agreements many times. On the other hand Jeanne M.Christensen, publicly said that Uber’s clients deserve fair trials where they can indict rapist drivers. According to this attorney far from pushing women into arbitration, Uber should support them to denounce those cases and put the criminals behind. The class-attorney believes that people signed an arbitration agreement as a way to feel safe and secure inside Uber´s cars. Furthermore, the company could make a frequency and severity pattern of the rapes alleged under Uber services. Besides, victims will speak up if they are supported by the important company.

VeenaDubal, who has advocated for Uber drivers’ rights, said in an interview that sometimes her defendants claim that due to arbitrary agreements they can´t speak out. People and media want to call up about those kinds of experiences are not random and Uber should have a plan for it.

Bryant Greening, Uber’s riders and drivers representative, considers Uber wants to be out from the public eye, a sadly way to react for a company that has earned respect for the excellence of their services.

Several cases are filed report that far frombeing safe passengers are intoxicated or asleep have been raped by drivers. Recently, a 26-year-old plaintiff from San Francisco said an Uber driver groped her.

Women are “horrified and shocked that this is what happened to them, and they are also horrified that people aren’t talking about it and that Uber has been fairly successful at keeping it out of the news”, said Christensen.

An Uber representative said in an email: “The allegations brought forth, in this case, are important to us and we take them very seriously. The representative did not, however, respond to questions about whether Uber’s arbitration settlement agreements allow the women to speak out or if they include standard confidentiality clauses.

Last December, Microsoft gave the first step to eliminate forced arbitration. The giant software enterprise stated that silencing people’s voices is a way to accept sexual misbehave. Microsoft legal team eliminates that kind of agreement.

Sarah is a fiction name and a fiction character, but sexual attacks inside Uber cars are a reality.