9 ms·

No sexual offenses From the article: "Uber, which had employed the driver even though he had been arrested on allegations of sexual assault three years ago" T

• laichzeit0 12y ago
  There really ought be no two minds about this. If he was acquitted and you don't give him a job soley because of that fact it would be unfair discrimination.
  • GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    I wouldn't hire George Zimmerman or Darren Wilson for any job.
    • jessaustin 12y ago
      If I were in a position to hire/not hire those characters, I would definitely stipulate that they may not bring a gun to work...
      • RealGeek 12y ago
        Would you hire them to look after black kids?
        • jessaustin 12y ago
          Frankly I don't envision them in any public-facing role, let alone dealing with kids. However, there are numerous jobs that don't require regular contact with the general public.
        • deleted 12y ago
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        • smtddr 12y ago
          If I found out my black son & daughter were being looked after by one of those two....
  • GrinningFool 12y ago
    Not necessarily acquitted though - could be the case hasn't come to trial yet, or some pressure was applied somewhere along the way that would never show up in a background check.
• dietrichepp 12y ago
  > The other side of that an accusation or suspicion isn't a reasonable basis on which to ruin someone's employability. It should be specific to the job. If it's a sexual offense, maybe they shouldn't hire you as a taxi driver / school counselor / other jobs that give you easy access to victims. Just like they shouldn't hire you as a cashier if you're suspected of check fraud.
• kyledrake 12y ago
  While I would often usually with you, the nature of sexual assault is that even in "developed" countries, it is very hard to convict people for committing these offenses, and very often the accused walk. I can only imagine how much worse this is in countries that are less than friendly to women (I am not saying that India is better or worse, I don't know). I don't think it would have hurt them to err on the side of caution on this one. It's certainly possible that their background check simply was unable to see this information, but given the pattern Uber seems to be building for themselves here, it would be really hard for me to believe their explanation of what happened anyways. Throw the other problems away: this is the actual problem at Uber. The fatal flaw Uber continues to make is that they fail to build trust, which brings their activities into question every time something like this happens. At this rate, it's just going to keep getting worse. I actually can't believe the board hasn't taken any action here. I've never in my life seen a startup more in need of a board intervention.
  • tomp 12y ago
    > I don't think it would have hurt them to err on the side of caution on this one. Erring "on the side of caution" in this case basically means denying someone a job, a livelihood, based on mere allegations that anyone can make. If you strictly enforce this (or even harsher variants, e.g. "no men sitting next to children on planes"), you make it very simple to ruin someone's life.
    • kyledrake 12y ago
      We're not talking about plane customers here, we're talking about the pilots. Finding trusted drivers in a situation where safety is important because people are in a unique position to trust that driver with their lives, with a startup that has to be extra-careful to prevent major controversies while they are under a heavy spotlight doing ambiguously legal things (or in the case of Portland a few days ago, just outright, unambiguously breaking the law and then trying to pass the legal buck to their drivers). The notion that women are filing police reports and potentially going to court over something so serious is not really something I would describe as a simple way to ruin someone's life. Nor would Uber rejecting an application due to a sexual assault allegation really qualify to me as a life ruiner. Law very often fails justice, particularly in sexual assault cases. When laws don't work, it's the job of a company to recognize when and how that failure occurs, and manage that risk. Uber failed to manage that risk, and most disturbingly, I can't even figure out if they care.
• RealGeek 12y ago
  > The other side of that an accusation or suspicion isn't a reasonable basis on which to ruin someone's employability. Would you marry or co-found a company with someone who was charged with a crime like murder, rape, robbery or fraud; but was let go after serving 7 months in prison because of insufficient evidence which could not meet the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt". Unfortunately, rape cases are very hard to convict (even in US) because police & prosecutors does not take rape investigations seriously.
  • mike_hearn 12y ago
    Unfortunately, rape cases are very hard to convict (even in US) because police & prosecutors does not take rape investigations seriously. They are hard to convict because usually there are no witnesses and it turns into he said / she said. I see a lot of people wishing it were not so, but the legal system has severe punishments and thus a high bar for conviction (or that's how it's supposed to be).
    • anigbrowl 12y ago
      It's more complex than that. If we have words on the street, and I punch you and break your nose, you won't have any problems getting your complaint taken seriously. Nobody gets their nose broken for pleasure; even boxing clubs and so on have rules of conduct and activities are generally supervised to ensure conduct remains within those boundaries. On the other hand, people have sex for pleasure a lot, and sexual activity is strongly linked to emotion, so if you come to the police with a tale of an unwelcome sexual encounter you have to answer all these extra questions about consent and secondary motive to get taken seriously. If a complainant doesn't show obvious signs of physical trauma indicating a violent struggle, then it can often be a problem to get the complaint of rape to be taken seriously and investigated urgently.
      • mercurial 12y ago
        My impression is that in many countries, police officers are inadequately trained and often do not treat rape and sexual assault as seriously as they deserve.
• awinder 12y ago
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/10/delhi-rape-one-conviction-706-cases-2012_n_4419374.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/10/delhi-rape-one-conv... Of 706 reported rape cases, 1 lead to an actual conviction. So you have an under-reported category of crime which is irregularly prosecuted. There's obvious ethical issues with denying jobs to people based on accusation rather than conviction, but in a society with a broken justice system surrounding that, there's ethical dilemmas no matter how you slice it. There's also a serious question about how you rate the ethical utility of someone not being able to get a job in a specific area, versus possible endangerment of someone's life.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    • baxter001 12y ago
      Great idea, you could operate on a sliding scale that reduces the fare based on freakiness of the driver. Make real killing by hiring a driver that torutured small animals and chronically wet the bed as a child, because although it has no real correlation with adult psychopathy you still save 8Rs/Km
  • deleted 12y ago
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    • hashx 12y ago
      > Heck, they even elected quite a few convicted criminals to lead the Government Can you give an example of a "convicted" (not accused) elected member from India? >For example, a small search on Amit Shah and his fake encounters Amit Shah has not been convicted. The case is ongoing. >To me all this showdown to ban Uber seems more like an attempt to squeeze a little extra dollars from an American company. By banning Uber they are trying to squeeze more dollars from it?
  • lettergram 12y ago
    I would just like to point out, that the crimes aren't necessarily under-reported (i.e. 706 reported), rather, there was not enough evidence to convict. I would still argue that there is a high amount of under-reporting because people are embarrassed, just want to put it behind them, etc. However, I also feel a large number of the reported cases are skewed due to angry ex-girlfriends, intoxication, etc. Specifically, in this case if he was not convicted it's not the responsibility of Uber to disclose that information (instead it's the driver). Uber (in the U.S.) cannot even disclose if someone was accused of rape (unless there was a felony conviction), conversely it is the drivers responsibility to share any convictions upfront (though a background check should still be done). Overall, I believe this has more to do with Uber's business practices. The rape wouldn't have even been an issue if Uber was capable of helping the police or explaining some basic questions. In other words, if Uber was able to say, "We did a background check, and he wasn't convicted" then there wouldn't have been an issue. However, Uber couldn't even be contacted, and was breaking transportation laws.
• tsax 12y ago
  Let me just remind everyone here that in India, it's easy to falsify most documents, so relying on some sort of governmental agency for background is itself negligence. I would expect better from Uber knowing how ruthless they are and I'm disappointed. That said, the Indian government, which is a monument to human incompetence and corruption can't shouldn't really get away with this ham-fisted reaction.
• pkaye 12y ago
  The legal process can move very slowly in India. It can take a decade for trials even for crimes with solid evidence.
• lokeshk 12y ago
  Agreed! If anything, the law and the enforcement agencies should be questioned on how the accused was let loose if he was guilty of rape earlier. Here's a screenshot doing rounds of the clean record certificate given by the Delhi police to the accused for Uber, though not confirmed by the police themselves: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4UpufJCAAEDCqC.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4UpufJCAAEDCqC.jpg
• anigbrowl 12y ago
  I think it's worth looking at this as the intersections of two contexts. One is the one that's mostly discussed below, how do you assess the criminality of someone who was arrested but not convicted. We are all, I hope, familiar with the particular complexities of rape as it's both harder to prove and often carries unusually negative consequences for the accuser, compared to an accusation that someone robber you or whatever, as well as India's particular cultural situation. The other one though, is the context of what job you're hiring someone for; in this case, to be a sort-of taxi driver. That means the person you hire is inevitably going to come in contact with some potentially vulnerable individuals as passengers (and I bet it wouldn't be too hard to make estimates on the probability of any given journey having a single female passenger). If there's a suspicion that the person might exploit that fact, then you shouldn't hire that person as a driver. That's a bit unfair to some potential drivers, but the flipside is that you have ethical obligations to both employees and customers. For other contexts, the calculus is different. For example, if I was Uber I would not be too worried about a previous conviction for auto theft, since drivers supply their own cars, and if the applicant has not been in trouble for a reasonable length of time then Uber doesn't really have any assets at risk. Likewise, I could perhaps be more open-minded about an arrest without a conviction for assault if I were hiring someone to do server maintenance vs. hiring them as a driver, as the probability of an offense x the number of personal encounters an employee would have in the course of normal duties would be much lower.