Uber, a major global ridesharing company, has agreed to pay 272 million Australian dollars ($178 million) to resolve a long-standing lawsuit with taxi and hire car drivers in Australia who were disadvantaged when the company entered the market.
The Supreme Court of Victoria was scheduled to hear a class action lawsuit against Uber on Monday. However, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, who represent 8,000 taxis and hire vehicle drivers, announced that the lawsuit would be dismissed as Uber accepted the financial settlement.
Uber’s aggressive 2012 market debut cost drivers and car owners money, according to Maurice Blackburn’s principal lawyer Michael Donelly, and the business has continuously tried to avoid paying them.
“Uber has blinkered, and thousands of regular Australians banded together to confront a global behemoth on the courtroom steps and after years of refusing to do the right thing by those we say they harmed,” the speaker declared.
In a statement, Uber said that ridesharing laws were nonexistent worldwide when the firm was founded more than ten years ago and referred to the taxi industry’s objections as “legacy issues.”
In addition to offering customers more options and better experiences, ridesharing has expanded Australia’s point-to-point transport sector and opened up new job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Australians, according to a statement.
“Uber has contributed significantly to several state-level taxi compensation programs since 2018, and with today’s proposed settlement, we firmly put these legacy issues in the past.”
Five years after the action was started, it is the fifth-largest class action settlement in Australian history.
