Swiss Uber drivers challenge falling pay and opaque algorithms

CHF70 for nine hours behind the wheel is the figure Cem Kurun says he took home on the day he spoke to Swissinfo. The Uber driver, who has worked in canton Zurich since 2019, says fares have fallen as competition has intensified and drivers have lost control over the conditions shaping their work.

Kurun says he once earned CHF1,200 working around 30 hours a week. Now, he makes just over CHF300. The arrival of Estonia-based Bolt in Zurich in 2024, alongside the effects of the Covid pandemic, has added to pressure from other private transport providers and taxi drivers, he says.

The strain reaches beyond the app’s fare shown to passengers. Kurun says he cannot raise his own price without losing access to rides, and questions whether drivers have meaningful independence when an algorithm controls matching and pricing. Unia, Switzerland’s largest trade union, says such control sits uneasily with the claim that drivers are self-employed. The dispute touches income, social security and the rights drivers can claim when platform decisions shape their working day.

Drivers say the app’s prompts can steer their decisions without showing how the system works. Kurun suspects that rejecting too many rides can reduce the offers he receives. He also says the app shows areas promising higher earnings, only for those opportunities to disappear by the time drivers arrive. Uber rejects the claim that acceptance and cancellation rates affect matching or personalised fares. The company says drivers can accept or reject trips without penalty.

Kurun also doubts that the option to set a fare gives drivers real pricing power. “As soon as I set the price even 10 cents higher than Uber’s price per kilometre, I stop getting rides,” he says. The gap between a formal choice and a driver’s experience is central to the debate over who controls platform work.

The fight over that control has crossed borders. In France, former Uber driver Brahim Ben Ali says he worked 60 to 70 hours a week at times for less than €6 an hour. After he sought access to his personal data, he says Uber denied or only partly fulfilled his requests. He later organised protests with his union and was disconnected from the platform without an explanation.

A Geneva-based data association helped turn drivers’ questions into a cross-border campaign. After Ben Ali’s attempts to obtain his data stalled, he connected with Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a mathematician who founded PersonalData.IO. The association helps platform workers, including drivers and delivery workers, exercise rights over personal data.

Dehaye says even identifying where to send a formal request was difficult, and that Uber’s responses often left information out. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation became applicable in 2018, giving the campaign a legal framework for requesting personal data. Dehaye pressed the company for months and travelled to its European headquarters in Amsterdam as part of the effort.

The case matters to workers trying to understand how a platform records their activity and makes decisions that affect their income or access to work. Ben Ali believed an algorithm, rather than a human resources team, had disconnected him. He first approached France’s data protection authority. His experience shows why access to data has become part of the wider labour dispute: without records, drivers have fewer ways to examine decisions they believe are shaping their livelihoods.

Swiss courts and labour organisations have challenged the idea that Uber drivers are simply independent contractors. Unia says the degree of control Uber exercises over drivers is incompatible with genuine self-employment. The union argues that drivers lack meaningful freedom of choice and must follow working conditions imposed by the platform. It says workers classified as self-employed can miss out on wages, expense reimbursements and social security contributions available to employees.

Several rulings at cantonal and federal level have found that drivers using Uber’s services should be considered employees. In 2018, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs also indicated that Uber drivers should be classified as employees. The legal status of drivers has remained contested, with consequences for the protections and costs attached to work in Switzerland.

For Kurun and other drivers, algorithmic transparency and employment status are linked. If a platform sets or strongly shapes fares, assigns rides and influences access to work, workers and unions argue that the relationship deserves scrutiny under labour rules. Uber maintains that drivers can reject trips without penalty. The debate now centres on how Swiss authorities and courts assess platform control, and what that assessment means for drivers’ earnings and social insurance.