Companies

Bird is a shared electric scooted company based in Santa Monica, CA. Bird was founded in 2017 and since then has expanded to over 100 cities in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Bird saw much early success with their scooters logging over 10 million rides in its first year of operation.

• On March 27th, 2020, Bird sent a mandatory one-way Zoom call invite to over 400 of their employees with no explanation. When the employees logged onto the Zoom call they were met with a woman’s voice that began reading a scripted speech, informing the attendees that they had all been laid off. The speech was only two minutes, at which point the call ended without giving the employees a chance to ask questions. Immediately afterwards the laid off employees were also automatically logged out of their company email and slack accounts.

Uber is a public U.S. based ridehailing company. Apart from their popular Uber ridesharing service, Uber also offers food delivery (UberEats) and a micromobility platform for users looking to share electric bikes and scooters. The company is based in San Francisco and has operations in over 785 cities worldwide.

• During the Covid-19 crisis, Uber chose to layoff over 3,700 people over a mass Zoom call. While lay offs are inevitable during this time, Uber showed that they did not care enough about their workers to lay them off in a more considerate manner.
• Uber is used to being under the spotlight for immoral business practices. Over the years Uber has been highly criticized for their unfair treatment of drivers, uncomfortable company culture (leading to multiple sexual assault allegations), increasing traffic congestion, disrupting the taxicab business, and for their aggressive strategy in dealing with regulators and city officials. In fact, if you visit the Uber Wikipedia page it reads like a rap sheet for all the times Uber has found themselves in hot water.