Uber adds 10000 drivers in six months

Controversial ride-sharing company Uber will increase prices by approximately 10 per cent on its UberX service, starting immediately on Friday.

This means the company is on schedule to deliver 20,000 new jobs in Australia by the end of 2015, as Uber’s Chief Advisor David Plouffe promised in February.

While the debate surrounding Uber in Australia has centred mainly on its legality and the tax status of Uber drivers, in the U.S. there is an ongoing fight to have Uber drivers recognised as employees.

That these uberX driver-partner-people are supposedly breaking the taxi laws is another matter – better that they’re working than doing nothing or sucking up Centrelink payments.

The service, which sees members of the public operate a formalised taxi service in their own cars, is operating in much of the rest of the country.

In a statement, Uber says its drivers have made more than 5 million trips since launching.

In Sydney, Uber says ‘flexible economic opportunities have provided a new source of income for residents of the 30 postcodes with Sydney’s highest rates of unemployment including Lakemba, Bankstown, Parramatta and Auburn’. An UberX driver is on the road an average of 20 hours each week, the spokesperson said, but stressed there is no typical driver.

It’s mentioned that a “wide-ranging review” of UberX has been undertaken as part of a larger dissection of the taxi industry, but SA’s transport minister Stephen Mullighan is quoted as saying the state government won’t do Uber “a special deal” based exclusively on its appearance “in media”.

The fight with the ATO is just one front on which Uber is challenging authorities.

Clint Thomas, 35, recently became an UberX driver after 10 years in the Australian air force – “I got sick of living out of a suitcase” – and he hasn’t looked back.