Uber’s dealings with Project 5 Starr raise more questions about whether the company’s drivers are independent contractors or employees.
A flier for Project 5 Starr — a five-hour class Uber drivers can take to be reactivated to the platform within two hours.
When New York City driver Uddin Momin lost his Uber credentials earlier this year, he had two options for regaining them — a two-day, $99 exam-based class vetted and certified by the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), or Project 5 Starr, a five-hour $99 no-exam-required class run by a novice Uber driver. Monin opted for Project 5 Starr, the self-proclaimed "express way" to Uber reactivation. Ninety minutes after completing the class, Uber sent him a text notifying him he was good to go.
For Momin, who has only been making a living as an Uber driver for a few weeks, Project 5 Starr was an obvious solution to deactivation. Quick and easy, it had him back on Uber in a matter of hours.
Momin Uddin was reactivated an hour and a half after Project 5 Starr, which is held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Thursday, ended.
The texts Uber sent to Momin Uddin notifying him that he was deactivated and then linked to Master Cabbie and Project 5 Starr, and then on 4:24 on Thursday, an hour and a half after Project 5 Starr ended, a text notifying Uddin that he was reactivated.
Uddin Momin
But the program, and others like it, raises a host of issues about Uber. As independent contractors, Uber drivers cannot receive formal training from the company — otherwise they could be considered employees and thus qualify for benefits. While Uber has no formal relationship with Project 5 Starr, BuzzFeed News has learned that the company has contributed to the program's curriculum and had a hand in developing its audience. Not only have Uber representatives attended Project 5 Starr classes and offered suggestions for improving them, the company has funneled thousands of deactivated drivers to it. And it's done so ahead of a soon-to-be-implemented TLC rule that will require all for-hire vehicle drivers in New York to attend a TLC-certified class, though Project 5 Starr lacks that certification.
Odder still: Junior George, the proprietor of the Project 5 Starr Uber training program, had less than a year of Uber driving experience when he first started teaching the class. For the past 17 years, he's been president and CEO of the Total Caribbean Network — a production company and live television network — and the owner of Caribbean music channel TimePlus Beats TV.
A 4.9-star–rated Uber driver, George began teaching Project 5 Starr last summer after pitching the company's New York office on the class. He quickly became a go-to for NYC Uber drivers seeking reactivation."We have seen at least over 2,000 drivers," George told BuzzFeed News at the conclusion of a recent class. "Their success is our success, their failure is our failure."
Project 5 Starr tells drivers they can expect to be reactivated within two hours of completing the class. And a number of deactivated Uber drivers who attended the class told BuzzFeed News the company made good on that promise, getting them quickly reactivated. That's pretty much what the ride-hailing service is looking for, according to comments made last year by Uber NY General Manager Josh Mohrer.
"Even if you're deactivated we then show you a very easy way to get reactivated which is taking a class," Mohrer told BuzzFeed News last October. "We don't offer it, a third party offers it. ... You go for a day, you pay a small fee and we let you back on. Eighty percent of the people that do that improve right away and their ratings are in a good place."
To be clear, NYC Uber drivers who've been deactivated have a second option to get back on the road, a $99 class offered by Master Cabbie. But with its two-day time commitment and exam, it's far less convenient for drivers for whom time is literally money.
"Master Cabbie deals a lot with taxi drivers," George said. "Uber drivers are not in the same bracket as taxi drivers. Master Cabbie doesn't teach a lot of customer service. The core of the problem is not being met. I think that we, being five hours, are the expressway in."
For now, anyway.
As part of the TLC's Vision Zero project, all for-hire vehicle drivers in New York will be required to take a class at a TLC-certified program and pass an associated TLC-proctored exam. Currently, there are four such programs, and Project 5 Starr isn't one of them. Which isn't to say it couldn't be — just that it must fulfill the curriculum requirements established by the TLC first. "[Project 5 Starr] would have to fulfill basic space requirements so that we would be assured they could handle an appropriate number of students, they would have to demonstrate their ability to create appropriate lesson plans based on the TLC's educational curriculum, and they would have to defer to the TLC on its choices of instructors," TLC spokesperson Allan Fromberg told BuzzFeed News.
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