No to Uber as main partner of the Berlinale
Statement by Klaus Meier, Berlin Taxi Social Guide
Contact: info@txsl.deMobile +49 176 58 87 37 70
The US company Uber proudly advertises that it is one of the main sponsors of the Berlinale for the first time. This is a huge success for the mega-company, which can now present itself as part of good society and counter its reputation as a destroyer of public services and a promoter of wage dumping.
The management of the Berlin Film Festival must ask itself why it accepts money from a company that is driving small self-employed people worldwide to ruin and has played a significant role in the decline of the taxi industry. According to all information available, Uber provides driving jobs to local companies whose business model is based on exploitation and wage dumping.
The Code of Ethics of the AG Film Festival, of which the Berlinale is unfortunately not a member, states:
"Film festivals should be fair employers and pay all employees* fairly for their work."
https://ag-filmfestival.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/AG-Filmfestival-CoE.pdf
Germany’s biggest film festival should follow suit.
The Berlin taxi drivers think that a cultural event that receives 12.9 million euros from the German government should demand humane and legally impeccable behaviour from its sponsors. Uber is known for ignoring every ruling of German courts so far on the basis of pretextual arguments
Venice is doing something about monstrous cruise ships, Cannes wants no more oligarch superyachts, Berlin should be about the welfare of economically vulnerable people.
Berlin’s taxi industry must not die. We need taxis that ensure that Berlin and its guests can be mobile at publicly guaranteed prices. We also need to protect the drivers behind the wheel of Uber cars from precarious work. They are mostly immigrants who accept a completely underpaid job that no person in a stable life situation would take.
The Berlin Taxi Social Guide is part of the programme "Solidarisches Grundeinkommen" (Solidarity Basic Income), which is funded by the Senate Department for Integration, Labour and Social Affairs. The project is supported by the Berlin Unemployment Centre of the Protestant Church in cooperation with the regional district of the service sector trade union ver.di.
