‘What is the hold up?’: Uber grew impatient with delays in city training courses as its drivers quit, emails show

Thestar.com
Aug. 30, 2022

Newly disclosed emails are shedding light on Uber’s frustration over Toronto’s troubled roll-out of a mandatory training program for taxi and ride-hailing drivers earlier this year.

In late 2021 council stopped issuing new municipal for-hire driver’s licences until the training was in place, but the launch of the program was delayed as the city struggled for months to attract qualified course providers.

Internal City of Toronto emails, which were obtained by an advocacy group through a freedom of information request and shared with the Star, capture Uber’s concern over not being able to sign up new workers during the licensing freeze. They show the company lobbied senior city staff and the mayor’s office to end the training approval delays, which took place against the backdrop of high turnover among the ride-hailing workforce.

RideFairTO, a group that advocates for stricter regulation of Uber and other ride-hailing services and which shared the emails with the Star, says the company’s impatience over the delays shows how its business model relies on a steady stream of low-paid drivers who quickly cycle out of the industry. The group says that since Uber arrived in Toronto that business model has led the company to resist any regulations that would hinder its ability to sign up workers fast.

Uber rejects those claims. It says its drivers earn decent wages and the company supports the city’s regulatory regime.

City council mandated training for all taxi and ride-hailing drivers in 2019 following the death of a 28-year-old Uber passenger. The launch of the program was deferred at the onset of COVID-19, but last November the city issued a new call for providers to deliver the courses, which would focus on themes like transporting passengers safely, serving riders with accessibility needs, and anti-harassment training. That same month council paused the issuance of licences for new drivers until the training was in place.

Municipal staff expected to start certifying third-party providers in January, but the emails show that by March none of the 12 companies that had submitted proposals had met city standards. The result was a months-long shutdown of new workers joining the ride-hailing industry, which had been losing drivers by the thousands.

According to a November 2021 city report, the number of ride-hailing drivers had declined by about 50 per cent since the start of the pandemic, from about 90,000 to 47,000. But even before that drop, there appeared to be significant churn in the industry.

In a Nov. 22 email to the mayor’s office, Carleton Grant, the city’s executive director of licensing and standards, reported that only about 60 per cent of licensed ride-hailing drivers in Toronto signed on to work during the last month before the pandemic struck, and the majority of them were “driving sporadically.”

Grant also noted that while Toronto had licensed 16,500 ride-hailing drivers in the five months before the freeze, only 39 per cent of app workers who obtained a municipal licence in 2020 still had one in 2021. Only a quarter of licencees from 2019 were still driving two years later.

The figures indicated the “turnover rate of licensees is quite high,” Grant wrote, attributing the trend to drivers signing up to work only periodically.

Uber had warned that a pause on licensing would lead to longer wait times and higher costs for customers, and as the training delays dragged on, the company grew frustrated.

In a March 14 email to Grant, a lobbyist working for the company estimated that almost 10,000 drivers had been “in abeyance” since before Christmas. The situation was “increasingly and frankly (incredibly) problematic,” she wrote. “What is the hold up?”

Grant pointed the finger at the providers.“We are pushing them, but the content has not met our expert panels requirements,” he replied.

Uber also pressured the mayor and council on the issue. On March 15 an advisor to Tory told Grant and another senior staffer that he had “been contacted by Uber many times” asking when the programs would be approved. Two weeks later the same advisor warned that Uber was planning to write to all city councillors to ask them to “put pressure” on staff to certify the programs.

City staff finally approved the first provider in late April, and have since added three more. But that doesn’t mean the training has gone to plan. The city was forced to suspend one of the courses six weeks after its approval following complaints about its all-online format.

According to the city, as of this month about 10,000 of the more than 67,000 licensed ride-hailing drivers in Toronto have completed a training course, which can take eight hours and cost up to $225.

Although staff initially predicted all new and existing drivers would be trained by the end of 2022, they have yet to release an updated timeline. Grant told the Star the city hopes to approve two or three more courses soon, and after that will set a new deadline.

RideFairTO spokesperson Thorben Wieditz said Uber’s push to end the licensing freeze shows the company depends on “a steady flow of incoming drivers” who it can sign up “as fast and easy as possible.”

Workers for the app-based service “very quickly realize that there is not enough money to be made and quit the platform. Uber relies on very low barriers of entry to replace the drivers lost,” he said.

He noted that the city used to require taxi drivers take a 17-day training program, but scrapped it in 2016 after lobbying by Uber. Since adopting the less onerous training policy three years ago, staff and council have rejected calls to strengthen it through measures like compulsory in-car instruction.

“Toronto’s training programs have been watered down to meet Uber’s business needs ... trumping public safety concerns,” Wieditz said.

Uber spokesperson Keerthana Rang rejected RideFair’s claims. She said more people are signing up to drive with the company in the GTA since almost any point since the onset of the pandemic, and in late June the median driver in Toronto earned more than $34 per hour of “engaged time.”

She said “safety is at the heart of Uber” and it supports measures to keep drivers and the public safe. The company “advocated for a timely rollout” of the training because it’s “an important step for drivers to get on the road, unlock flexible earning opportunities, help to decrease wait times and provide safe, affordable rides to all Torontonians,” she said.

A spokesperson for Tory said while his office relayed Uber’s concerns to city staff, it wasn’t involved in the training approval process “beyond asking staff for progress updates.”

Lawvin Hadisi said his office consulted representatives across the industry, and had its own concerns the slow approval process was unfair not just to ride-hailing companies but to taxi firms, which were also prohibited from hiring new drivers during the freeze, as well as would-be drivers and customers.