Timeline of Developments
Last development: October 5, 2023
- October 5, 2023
Amsterdam court fines Uber EUR 584,000 for not complying with the disclosure order
Six months after the Court of Appeal's ruling, the Amsterdam District Court found that Uber still had not provided the ordered information about the automated part of its decision to dismiss two of the drivers, and that Uber had instead tried to re-argue points the Court of Appeal had already decided and to raise trade-secret objections the appeals court had already rejected. The court ordered Uber to forfeit accumulated penalty payments of EUR 4,000 per day, totaling EUR 584,000, calling the amount "not disproportionate" given Uber's continued non-compliance. This is the clearest evidence that the April 2023 ruling had real teeth - a Dutch court was willing to fine Uber over half a million euros for not following it.
Source: Worker Info Exchange - April 4, 2023
Amsterdam Court of Appeal rules for drivers against both Uber and Ola
The Amsterdam Court of Appeal issued three linked judgments - covering the Uber robo-firing case (four drivers), a separate Uber data-access case (six drivers), and a data-access case against Ola (three drivers) - overturning the District Court's earlier finding for Uber. The court held that ride assignment, dynamic pricing, driver ratings, "fraud probability" scoring, and account deactivation can all qualify as automated decision-making under GDPR Article 22. It rejected Uber's defense that human staff meaningfully reviewed deactivation decisions, finding on the evidence that the review was "not... much more than a purely symbolic act." The court also rejected both companies' argument that trade-secret protections justified withholding the information, calling that argument disproportionate given the impact of unexplained dismissals and pay decisions on drivers. Both Uber and Ola were ordered to disclose more information to drivers about how they were assigned work, priced, and evaluated - see "What The Ruling Required" for the specifics of each company's order.
Source: Worker Info Exchange - March 12, 2021
Amsterdam District Court rejects Uber robo-firing claim, but orders Ola to explain its algorithm
The Amsterdam District Court issued its first-round ruling. On the Uber side, the court accepted Uber's account that a human team - requiring two employees to agree - reviewed each fraud-related account deactivation, and rejected the drivers' argument that the decision was "solely automated" under GDPR Article 22. On the Ola side, the court reached a different result: it found that Ola's algorithmic calculation of deductions from driver pay did qualify as automated decision-making, and ordered Ola to explain the main criteria behind it and their role in the process. This asymmetric outcome - a loss for the Uber drivers' robo-firing claim, a partial win against Ola - was reversed in part two years later on appeal. Worker Info Exchange director James Farrar called the ruling "a giant leap forward" despite the mixed result; University of Amsterdam researcher Jill Toh said it still left drivers "insufficiently able to obtain sufficient data" about how they were managed.
Source: TechCrunch - July 1, 2020
Drivers sue Uber in Amsterdam over algorithmic firing (exact filing date not confirmed - reported only as "July" 2020)
The date shown for this entry is a placeholder only, for sorting purposes - our best source for this filing only says "July" 2020, not an exact day. According to the Dutch news outlet NL Times, at least two UK-based Uber drivers filed suit in Amsterdam - where Uber's European entity is based, giving Dutch courts jurisdiction - seeking transparency about the algorithms Uber uses to assign rides, and specifically the automated "fraud" determination that got them removed from the app. The drivers were represented by the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) and backed by Worker Info Exchange (WIE), a UK-based nonprofit that helps gig workers use GDPR data rights collectively. Related claims were eventually joined or filed alongside this one, ultimately covering four Uber drivers disputing account terminations, six Uber drivers seeking data access, and three Ola Cabs drivers seeking data access - all decided together on appeal in 2023.
Source: NL Times