What The Ruling Actually Required

"Drivers won" is true but vague. The April 2023 Court of Appeal ruling ordered specific disclosures - not identical ones - from Uber and from Ola, and Uber's failure to comply led to a separate, later penalty ruling. Here's what each company was actually told to do.

What Uber was ordered to disclose

The Court of Appeal ordered Uber to give drivers meaningful information about the automated parts of decisions made about them, including: the logic behind how work is allocated to drivers, how "upfront" and dynamic pricing affect driver pay, and the profiling and performance-related tags used to evaluate drivers - the kind of information a driver would need to actually understand, and potentially contest, an automated decision, rather than just being told a decision was made. This applied specifically to the robo-firing case's fraud-related deactivations and to the separate data-access case's six drivers. (source: Worker Info Exchange)

What Ola was ordered to disclose

Ola's order covered different ground, reflecting the different claims made against it: information about drivers' earnings profiles, and about the "fraud probability scores" Ola used in decisions about work and fare allocation. The court also held that data has to be provided in a genuinely usable, "structured, commonly used and machine-readable" format - rejecting the idea that handing over a PDF satisfies a driver's data-access rights under the GDPR, since a PDF isn't something a driver (or a tool acting on their behalf) can easily analyze. (source: WageIndicator Foundation case summary)

The trade-secrets argument that didn't work

Both companies argued that disclosing this information would expose valuable trade secrets or make their platforms easier to game or attack. The Court of Appeal rejected that argument as disproportionate: whatever business interest the companies had in secrecy, it didn't outweigh a driver's interest in understanding - and being able to challenge - an automated decision that could end their ability to work through the app. That finding matters beyond this case, because "it's a trade secret" is the standard defense platforms raise whenever a worker or regulator asks how an algorithm actually works. (source: Worker Info Exchange)

Enforcement: the EUR 584,000 fine

A ruling is only as strong as its enforcement. Six months after the Court of Appeal's order, the Amsterdam District Court found that Uber still hadn't provided the required information about the automated part of its decision to dismiss two drivers, and had instead tried to re-litigate points the appeals court had already decided. The court ordered Uber to forfeit accumulated penalty payments of EUR 4,000 per day, reaching EUR 584,000 by the time of that ruling in October 2023 - and said that amount was "not disproportionate" given how long Uber had been out of compliance. As of our most recent check, we have not found public confirmation of Uber having fully complied since. (source: Worker Info Exchange)

For the sequence of events, see the timeline. For why this uses GDPR rather than anti-discrimination law, see Why It's Significant.