Uber drivers across Europe are challenging the opaque algorithms that set fares, hand out jobs and can cut accounts. Much of that fight has been steered from Geneva.
The latest reporting from SWI swissinfo.ch centres on Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a mathematician and founder of Geneva-based PersonalData.IO, which helps platform workers use GDPR rights to obtain the data companies hold on them. That work has fed into French activism, Dutch enforcement and the Amsterdam collective claim TaxiFeed has already covered.
From Lille to Geneva
Former Lille-area driver Brahim Ben Ali, who drove for Uber from 2015 to 2019, says he could not understand why colleagues earned more after similar hours. He claims the app steered drivers with surge-style incentives that vanished on arrival, and that rejecting too many jobs meant fewer offers or disconnection.
When data requests came back incomplete, Ben Ali’s French union linked up with Dehaye. Ben Ali was later cut off the platform with no explanation — “the equivalent of being fired,” he says — and believes an algorithm, not a human HR team, took the decision.
Dehaye says reconstructing Uber’s working conditions meant getting the telemetry drivers generate: time available, wait times, location before accept, rejection counts, and trip duration. Once fuller data arrived, he argues, the picture was not a simple matchmaking tool. Uber’s systems, he says, use AI and machine learning on fares and ride allocation, and automated tools can sit behind disconnect decisions. “Another part of the system remains completely opaque,” he told Swissinfo.
What Swiss drivers say
In canton Zurich, driver Cem Kurun told Swissinfo he once cleared about CHF1,200 for roughly 30 hours a week. He now says he makes just over CHF300 in a comparable stretch. On the day of interview he reported CHF70 after nine hours.
He claims comparing his pay with what a passenger said they paid showed a gap of almost 50% on one trip, and that a colleague took just over CHF30 when the passenger said they had paid CHF80. Like Ben Ali, he suspects rejecting offers hurts future work. Swissinfo’s companion report also flags fiercer competition after Bolt entered Zurich in 2024.
Uber rejects claims that it tweaks prices or ride offers based on individual behaviour such as past rejections, calling those allegations “completely false.” It says weekly earnings statements show what passengers paid and what Uber kept, and that trip fares rest on real-time journey data. On its cut, Uber told Swissinfo its global share was about 21% in the third quarter of 2025 and has stayed relatively stable; Dehaye argues the share can exceed the 25% figure Uber has publicly cited, varying trip to trip. Uber says rider–driver gaps can also reflect tax, insurance and other third-party costs.
Fines and the next wave of claims
Geneva-linked data work has sat behind a run of enforcement. The Dutch data authority fined Uber €10 million in 2023 over transparency and driver data rights, €290 million in 2024 over transfers of European drivers’ data to the US, and almost €825 million this summer for fully automated account suspensions or permanent deactivations without proper human involvement under GDPR — a decision Uber is challenging.
Worker Info Exchange, whose founder James Farrar also worked with Dehaye early on, has launched a Netherlands collective action for roughly 240,000 European drivers. It estimates UK dynamic-pay changes cut annual income by about £5,000; Uber disputes that. Ben Ali, Dehaye and about 19,000 drivers are preparing a separate claim that Ben Ali puts at around €40,000 per driver.
“I’ll be AI’s worst nightmare,” Ben Ali says. For Swiss and UK drivers alike, the practical question is the same: who controls the data that decides the next job, the next fare — and whether the account stays live.