Will Uber Eats Crack Down on U.S. Undocumented Migrants After French Purge?

Fatma Khaled - Yesterday 

This week, UberEats cracked down on undocumented delivery workers in France in a company effort to combat fraud by disconnecting the accounts of those with false IDs, raising questions about whether something similar might happen in the United States.


Pictured above, an Uber Eats delivery man rides a moped in Paris on March 22, 2020, as a strict lockdown is in effect to limit the spread of the COVID-19 caused by novel coronavirus in the country prohibiting all but essential outings.

© Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images

When asked whether UberEats will look to remove the accounts of the company's undocumented workers in the United States, a spokesperson for the food-delivery platform told Newsweek on Thursday that the purge of accounts in France was part of fighting fraud and illegal account sharing as per a request by the French government.

What To Know As UberEats Purges Accounts Of Undocumented French Workers

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Hundreds of undocumented UberEats workers protested on Monday in Paris against the crackdown, chanting "justice for couriers" and "documents for UberEats" after the company deactivated accounts that belonged to its workers, Wired reported.

UberEats deactivated the accounts of dozens of delivery workers in France earlier this summer, according to Jérôme Pimot, president of the Collective of Platform Couriers (CLAP), the union that organized the workers' protest in Paris.

The union president added that UberEats later announced that it had deleted 2,500 accounts, an action that Pimot described as "a massacre."

Protesters accused the company of taking advantage of undocumented workers and letting them go as demand increased and decreased. Undocumented workers found it easy to apply to work on the platform during the pandemic when demand for food deliveries were spiking as many were under lockdown.

However, delivery demand is now expected to continue to slide as consumers scale back on their spending amid high inflation, according to analysts, Reuters reported last month.

"Investors have written off food delivery as the next shoe to drop as consumers tighten up their wallets," Bernstein analyst Nikhil Devnani said, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, UberEats' latest financial results revealed that monthly users, basket size, and order frequency increased only between 1 and 3 percent over the three months leading to June, compared to last year.

"As part of our commitment to fight document fraud and illegal work, we conducted a thorough audit of Uber Eats courier accounts in France. We identified fraudulent uses of our application and have taken action by deactivating these accounts while setting up an appeal procedure for couriers who want their case to be re-examined," an UberEats spokesperson told Newsweek in an emailed statement. "We are determined to fight illegal work and open to discussion with all relevant stakeholders whom we have kept informed of our actions."

An external company specializing in document authentication audited 60,000 UberEats delivery workers in France and found that 4 percent of those accounts were either fraudulent or were linked to multiple courier accounts, according to Wired.

It is common for undocumented workers in France to use a work permit and documents that belonged to someone else to apply for jobs in the country and work under an alias.

"Every restaurant owner in Paris has someone working under an alias," Jean Ganizate, the cofounder of the Melt restaurant group, told Le Monde in June.

Many delivery workers who had their UberEats accounts deactivated had Italian ID cards which can't be used outside Italy, but the company in 2018 allowed workers to use this card to create an account, the president of the Independents Union, Thomas Aonzo, told Wired.

Newsweek has reached out to the White House and Uber for comment and additional information.