Responding to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) international expose, ride hailing app Uber has urged the public to judge it by what has happened post 2017, when it hired a new chief executive officer (CEO) Dara Khosrowshahi,.
In a statement, Uber’s SVP of Marketing & Public Affairs Jill Hazelbaker said,”We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values. Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come”.
Uber now claimed that it is a different company today, when compared to the situation in 2017. To buttress this point it said 90 per cent of current Uber employees joined after Dara became CEO.
“Uber is now one of the largest platforms for work in the world and an integral part of everyday life for over 100 million people. We’ve moved from an era of confrontation to one of collaboration, demonstrating a willingness to come to the table and find common ground with former opponents, including labor unions and taxi companies. We are now regulated in more than 10,000 cities around the world, working at all levels of government to improve the lives of those using our platform and the cities we serve,” Uber said.
There has been no shortage of reporting on Uber’s mistakes prior to 2017. Thousands of stories have been published, multiple books have been written—there’s even been a TV series. Five years ago, those mistakes culminated in one of the most infamous reckonings in the history of corporate America. That reckoning led to an enormous amount of public scrutiny, a number of high-profile lawsuits, multiple government investigations, and the termination of several senior executives,” it added.
ICIJ investigation, Uber Files, revealed how the start-up used unethical practices and illegal means to circumvent laws to increase its business and keep government authorities at bay through technology tools controlled out of its headquarters (Kill Switch).