Ride-hailing companies Uber and Bolt are considering price rises to offset soaring fuel costs for drivers as gig economy operators come under fire for failing to offer support packages to vulnerable workers.
Over the past year the price of a litre of unleaded has risen 42 per cent to an all-time high of 167p, the RAC says. So the companies are considering price rises to pass on to their drivers, who must buy their own fuel.
The squeeze on drivers comes at a difficult time for private-hire operators such as Uber, which are already contending with a shortage of some 30,000 drivers. The company is considering a range of measures and will announce support for drivers as soon as this week.
Bolt, which, unlike Uber, does not yet guarantee its 50,000 drivers the minimum wage, is expected to share details of a support package with drivers this week. In January, Bolt raised prices by 10 per cent in London.
Fuel costs are pushing drivers to spurn jobs that involve long trips to pick up customers.
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“I’m not going to pick up anybody who is farther away because I’m paying for that extra fuel. So there is a knock-on effect for the customer,” said Habib Ur-Rehman, a private-hire driver in Manchester.
Last week, Deliveroo announced a partnership with Shell giving riders a discount of 4p a litre — a fraction of recent increases. The company is not raising prices for customers to offset riders’ higher costs. The AA said on Friday that less than half of the 5p a litre cut in fuel duty announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak last Wednesday had been passed on to consumers.
Raja Khan, a driver for courier company Stuart, which delivers orders for Just Eat, said he now spends £60 on fuel every two days, up from £40 last year. Khan said he worked as many as 13 hours a day to make £100.
“It’s crazy that precarious workers are having to shoulder the cost of this crisis. There needs to be an uplift in their fees that mirrors the uplift in the cost of doing their jobs,” said Alex Marshall, president of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain.