The City of Seattle says it will let Uber drivers form a union, and Uber has retaliated by producing a series of anti-union audio programs that it is pushing to Uber drivers' apps, where the programs light up a non-dismissable alert asking the drivers to listen to the program.
The drivers are not forced to listen to the podcasts.
The notification remains at the bottom of the driver screen regardless of whether it is ignored, or if the podcast is listened to or not. “Like messages at the bottom of the rider app, they cannot be completely removed,” Hambley said of the podcast notifications. “And the podcast-related messages typically remain in place for four or five days, regardless of whether drivers interact with them.”
Uber is using in-app podcasts to dissuade Seattle drivers from unionizing
[Jordan Golson/The Verge]
(via /.)