Alexandru Iftimie, a 39-year-old Romanian who moved to the UK seven years ago, went all the way to the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam to seek justice after he was almost fired by an HR-Uber ATM for re-routing across to a temporarily closed bridge, reports Guardian.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Iftimi was working as an Uber driver in London when at one point he received a warning message on the app: “I’ve detected fraudulent activity, so you have to stop or I have to fire you,” he recalls.

“I thought, ‘This must be a mistake, I know I didn’t do anything.’ But two weeks later, I got another message: the same message, but this time it said, “This is the final warning. One more time and the end.”

When he called Uber’s driver helpline to find out why he had been warned, he says he was met with frustration. It turns out the problem was caused by an unexpected rerouting, although he insists he didn’t charge the customer extra for it.

“Can you imagine how difficult it must have been to explain to the Uber operator – I don’t know where he was – that the Blackwall Tunnel was closed during the journey and therefore I had to take a detour?” he says.

Iftimie was unable to get a clear explanation as to why Uber’s systems alerted him to the “fraudulent activity”.

Rumun says his main concern at the time was that Uber was his only source of income and there was a pandemic, and if he lost it, he wouldn’t know where to take it.

“In a normal company, you would have an HR department, and this problem can be solved one way or another – not necessarily in your favor, but you would have a team of specialists,” he adds.

With the help of his union, the App Drivers and Couriers Union, he continued to demand from Uber data about him and especially about complaints, but he never found out what he had done wrong.

Iftimie sued Uber

With the help of the Worker Info Exchange and his union, Iftimi sued Uber — and another ride-hailing app he worked for, Ola — in an appeals court in Amsterdam, where Uber’s European headquarters are located.

The court found that he and the other drivers involved in the case were entitled to more information about how automated decisions were made about them.

Even before the case went to court, Uber apologized and admitted its mistake.

Iftimie hopes that the ruling will help others challenge decisions by automata that threaten their livelihoods.

“It’s about principles. We must fight for our principles,” says Iftimi.

“In the communist Romania my parents described, you couldn’t say a word: you couldn’t say anything. You could be arrested for telling a joke about the wrong person. I did not make this big change to try to bring communism here: I want my children and I to be British. So when something I think is wrong, I fight for it.”

Iftimi’s life has changed drastically since he was an Uber driver – he is about to graduate from law school, about to get a new job and has a nine-month-old daughter.

“To me, it’s a story with a happy ending from any point of view,” he says.

“We are disappointed that the court did not recognize the robust processes we use, including extensive human review, when deciding to disable a driver’s account due to suspected fraud,” an Uber spokesperson said.

“These decisions only affect a few specific drivers in the UK who were disqualified in 2018-2020 due to very specific circumstances.”