Uber Drops Mandatory Arbitration Requirement for Sexual Assault Victims

On Tuesday, ride-sharing company Uber formally announced it would no longer require sexual harassment and assault victims to arbitrate their claims against the company.  Prior to the company’s public announcement, all such claims were subject to confidential and mandatory arbitration.

According to the announcement that was issued by Uber’s Chief Legal Officer, Tony West, titled “Turning the lights on,” Uber is making three specific changes aimed at improving the company’s safety processes:

First, we will no longer require mandatory arbitration for individual claims of sexual assault or sexual harassment by Uber riders, drivers or employees.

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Second, survivors will now have the option to settle their claims with Uber without a confidentiality provision that prevents them from speaking about the facts of the sexual assault or sexual harassment they suffered.

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Third, we commit to publishing a safety transparency report that will include data on sexual assaults and other incidents that occur on the Uber platform.

The new policy was reportedly rolled out in response to an April 26th open letter to Uber’s Board of Directors that was signed by more than a dozen women who claim they were sexually harassed or assaulted by an Uber driver between October 2016 and March 2018.  In March, an attorney for many of the women who wrote the open letter reportedly filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Uber “seeking to remove the arbitration requirement and compel Uber to adopt safety measures, including fingerprinting all its drivers” in the Northern District of California.

This is not the first time in recent months a company has removed its arbitration requirement for sexual assault and harassment victims.  In December, Washington-based Microsoft Corporation immediately waived its “contractual requirement for arbitration of sexual harassment claims in our own arbitration agreements for the limited number of employees who have this requirement.”  You may read more about Microsoft’s new policy in a prior Disputing blog post.

Photo credit:  volker-kannacher on Foter.com / CC BY-ND