Uber Takes A Cut 'N Run Strategy With The Public

Wait, that's not an Uber driver recruitment event. It's Pugent Sound drivers in Washington forming the App-Based Drivers Association with the help of Teamsters in May.

Wait, that's not an Uber driver recruitment event. It's Pugent Sound drivers in Washington forming the App-Based Drivers Association with the help of Teamsters in May.

A recent Uber cattle call for drivers in Las Vegas revealed two tactics common to companies and organizations that need to hide out from the sunshine.

The meeting excluded a reporter and regulators from the Nevada Transportation Authority. According to an Oct. 15 article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “A Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter was not allowed to stay for the company’s presentation. Officials with the Nevada Transportation Authority, which regulates buses, limousines and taxi companies operating outside Clark County, were at the meeting site, but they too were denied access.”

You would think a company with $18 billion in capital backing could learn the eternal rules of media relations, but maybe it’s worth more to cover up than build a good reputation. What Uber is saying: Public and government not allowed. What everyone asks: What are they hiding?

LCT witnessed a taste of this tendency at the Global Business Travel Association Convention in July: Uber Blows Product Launch.

As any savvy media advisor would tell you, the more evasive you act, the more you invite curiosity scrutiny. I would wager that any number of media organizations have “embedded” drivers into the TNCs as we speak, who will spend months “working by day, taking notes by night,” or vice versa, for some exposes.

These are long overdue. Once again, the TNCs can solve the entire controversy surrounding them by simply following the same rules. As the article states: “Southern Nevada regulators have said they would welcome Uber as an operator if it complied with the same rules that existing taxi and limousine companies do.”

So would just about every other regulatory body in the nation for that matter. And then the media will move onto something else.