back to article If you say it loud enough, Uber will sound atrocious: Super Cali juristic discrimination process

Uber is once again being hauled into court, this time on allegations it deliberately underpaid women engineers and staff who were not white or asian. The lawsuit (PDF), filed in the San Francisco Superior Court this week, alleges violations of California's Equal Pay Act and Private Attorney General Act, and demands back wages …

  1. ma1010
    Paris Hilton

    Uber did something sexist and illegal?

    So, business as usual, then?

    Paris, because Uber doesn't seem to have a clue, either.

  2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Stack ranking

    These can't all be coincidence or simple mistakes. It sounds like Uber did serious research into business models that grow rapidly then die in a fire.

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Stack ranking

      The more I hear about Uber, the more I think the top Managers were all given a book at the start of the Company called "The Top 100 Management Techniques NOT to use", and some how all of them missed the NOT in the title, and so implemented as many of them as possible.

  3. The Nazz

    Wonderment

    It never ceases to bemuse me that those persons that have the inherent "victim" advantage gene built in, then complain about that advantage.

    Whenever i conducted a review into my staff, those that actually got on with the job, did a good,job and got results quite naturally got a better review than those that spent a fair bit of time whinging about their many perceived disadvantages they suffered and did an half arsed job as a result.

    1. Someone Else Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: Wonderment

      I suppose you don't work an Uber, then?

    2. Stu Mac

      Re: Wonderment

      White and Asian people on average better employees non shocker. Oh the inconvenience of it all!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wonderment

      I have only had a handful of employees who felt they were badly treated and underpaid compared to staff who were better than them and they could be right but strangely when they left the work they were responsibel for suddenly starte dto be performed to a higher level of quality, more predictably and with less issues. We also had to fix quite a lot of the work these individual has performed.

      I am sure there are exceptions but a sense that an employee is undervalued and unfairly treated compared ot others is quite strongly correlated with them being poor at their job. At the end of the day judgments should be as imaprtial as possible and based on evidence but judgemenst on performance still have to be made. WIthout exception those staff who actually went as far as to criticise a list of other employees who in their opinion they out performed were completely incompetent so much so that they were unaware of their own lack of competence.

  4. davenewman

    Uber is one company that has objective data on performance. So why not use it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Uber is one company that has objective data on performance"

      Are you confusing drivers with employees?

    2. evilhippo

      Because objective reality is politically incorrect.

      Expect a lot of down votes.

      1. Hollerithevo

        @evilhippo

        What is 'objective reality'? Is what looks to you like reality someone else's reality? A fat cat at the top of the pile sees the world as fair and just, because he's been rewarded for his merit. Another guy scrounging for cash-in-hands jobs at the bottom of the food chain lives in the same world, and his reality is different.

        'Politically correct' began as a term that was shorthand for saying 'call people what they want to be called' and 'don't assume your world-view is everyone's world view'. Now it's a term to slag people off if they think some situation that you think is fair is, to them, not fair.

  5. Bloodbeastterror

    Can you stop with the "super cali" stuff now? You'll never better the original Sun, and it's beginning to appear desperate.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Can you stop with the "super cali" stuff now? You'll never better the original Sun, and it's beginning to appear desperate.

      True: you wont beat the Sun on this classic, given that one of their hacks created the original. However el Reg have managed some pretty decent riffs on it over the years. I don't see it as desperate but more as a nod or hat tip to a bloody good headline from long ago. Nowadays we kool kids - (I'm 47) call this sort of thing a "meme".

      el Reg does "Super Cali" in the same way that Private Eye does "bloke with younger bird piccy". (My quotes).

  6. Oh Homer
    Flame

    "people of color"

    Eugh! Yet another in a long line of discriminatory euphemisms.

    Why can't they just be "people"?

    Seriously, name anyone in the entire history of humanity that did not have a "colour", other than possibly the Invisible Man! Mine is a sort of pinky-beige, for example. Doesn't that also qualify me as a "person of colour"?

    Frankly I find this misguided euphemism more offensive than the "n" word. At least when people say that, they're not even pretending to be civil, but this endless shuffling around, desperately trying to come up with a phrase that inoffensively describes "them", ironically misses the point that the most offensive part about it is the mistaken belief that "they" need any description at all, other than "human".

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: "people of color"

      WHITE people have color, too. So I'll just interpret that as "everyone".

      /me starts new TV channel, WET . ok that could be anything from a pr0n channel to channel dedicated to fishing and water sports. But if I'm being too vague, it's a play on "BET" which has nothing to do with gambling (as far as I know). And I'll encourage high school students to start a "White Student Union" and "Caucasion Club", similar to other such organizations within the school that you find with "other races" in their names [except there's none for 'white people' - I am _so_ excluded!!!]

      trolling, trolling, hence the icon.

    2. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: "people of color"

      Seriously? It's used because it's the most appropriate term.

      They can't just be 'people' because they're a defined group of people singled out for discriminatory treatment. There needs to be some way of highlighting why these people have been discriminated against.

      POC usually covers everyone that isn't visibly white (pink) skinned, so an alternative term would be 'people that are not white'. That's a bit of a mouthful, anything non white is arguably 'colour', so POC is entirely appropriate.

      In the same way you can't use 'humans' because women were also discriminated against.

      Now, in this case you have a bit of a point because it doesn't cover everyone non white, the lawsuit explicitly defines their usage of POC as 'latino, african american, or american indian'. Whilst strictly speaking using POC in an article or press release about this case is inaccurate, it's less of a mouthful than LAAAI, and more widely understood.

      1. Oh Homer
        Headmaster

        Re: "they're a defined group"

        That's exactly my point. The mere act of describing them as a group is discriminatory, indeed the root cause of the discrimination.

        The way to address this is not to legitimise it by parroting the discriminatory rhetoric, but by simply stating that discriminatory treatment based on trivia such as aesthetics is unacceptable (and hopefully illegal).

      2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        Re: "people of color"

        "... people singled out for discriminatory treatment ..."

        That's actually, and I'm not trolling here, the best wording/definition I've come across so far.

  7. J. R. Hartley

    Evil

    Uber are giving Google a run for their money, if you'll excuse the pun.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    shocker

    Mangers have biases.

    Who would have guessed?

    In many workplaces its often more "does your face fit" than how effectively you do your assigned tasks

    .. this may not be gender, colour, etc. but could be more general e.g. you could be "white" male in a mainly "white" male workplace, but the workplace "canteen culture" is quite racist & misogynist...If you are not a bigot then you find your "face does not fit" even if you have gender, "colour" in common with co-workers.

    People all have biases, any assessments with a degree of human subjectivity will thus be prone to bias.

    A good company should take this into account and try and reduce subjective metrics to bare minimum possible.

  9. VulcanV5
    Devil

    Supercalifragilisticshortonpriceatrocious

    The more it goes on and the longer it lasts, the impression is unavoidable that Uber was never set up to be a ride-hailing service at all but the perfect stock for shorting. . . But: who knew, huh?

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