Criminal complaint filed against Uber Eats for worker pay violations

Taipei, Aug. 10 (CNA) A delivery worker alliance and labor union have filed criminal complaints against Uber Technologies Inc. and Uber Eats Taiwan executives, accusing them of underpaying workers handling multiple deliveries under Taiwan's new delivery worker protection law.

The complaints, filed Monday with the Taipei District Prosecutors Office, target Uber Technologies CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber Eats Taiwan Chairperson Michelle Georgette Parker, the platform's Taiwan general manager and several local corporate representatives.

An alliance promoting Taiwan food delivery industry rights and the National Delivery Industry Union accused Uber Eats of knowingly adopting an unlawful payment formula for so-called "stacked orders" -- in which a courier delivers two or more orders in a single trip.

The company has been underpaying couriers while leading them to believe they were being compensated in accordance with the Delivery Workers' Rights Protection and Delivery Platform Management Act, which Uber Eats pledged to comply with, the groups said.

Alliance spokesperson Su Po-hao (蘇柏豪), who said he is also a delivery worker affected by the policy, said Uber Eats knowingly failed to pay the legally required minimum compensation despite being aware of the new regulations, which took effect on July 21.

Union Chairman Chen Yu-an (陳昱安) cited an example in which a courier spent 25 minutes completing delivery of the first order and 29 minutes delivering a second one.

Under the new law, which guarantees a minimum payment of NT$45 (US$1.40) per order and requires compensation based on delivery time at a rate of NT$245 per hour (hourly minimum wage of NT$196 x 1.25) the courier should have received NT$220.6, Chen said.

Instead, Uber Eats calculated the payment based only on the longer delivery time of 29 minutes, rather than the combined time spent on both orders, paying NT$118.5 -- an alleged shortfall of NT$102.1 -- he said.

Su said the Ministry of Labor (MOL) has determined that Uber Eats' method of calculating stacked-order pay violated the new law, which in fact it appeared to do late last week after details of the alleged underpayment first surfaced.

At the time, the MOL said it believed that the platform's delivery pay calculation in the case cited by Chen violated the law and that the company could be fined between NT$20,000 and NT$100,000 for each violation.

Further fines could be imposed if the situation did not improve, the MOL said, urging Uber Eats to immediately halt the illegal practice.

Responding to the allegations last Thursday, Uber Eats said its payment formula for stacked deliveries was based on the total time a courier actually spends completing the combined trips, rather than counting overlapping delivery times multiple times.

The company argued that under its formula, each order in a stacked delivery was still covered by the minimum compensation guarantees under the new law.

The alliance and the union said Monday they would continue collecting delivery records and payment statements to help affected couriers file complaints while pursuing both administrative and criminal action against the company and its executives.