Uber drivers from the UK, the Netherlands, and other EU countries have filed a collective legal action at Amsterdam's district court alleging the company's AI-powered pay-setting algorithm breaches GDPR by using automated profiling to suppress wages. The claim, led by the Worker Info Exchange and representing approximately 241,000 drivers, seeks billions in damages and an injunction to halt dynamic pay-setting. It is the first pan-European collective action of its kind, according to the European Trade Union Confederation. The core allegation is structurally simple: Uber's algorithm learns each driver's behavioural floor — the minimum fare they will accept — and pushes prices toward it. Drivers report being offered different rates for the same trip at the same time. Rotterdam driver Mohammed Shirwa described the system as a boss that "is learning about you and what you are willing to accept," while London driver Kola Oba recounted being offered £23 for a job a colleague was simultaneously offered at £27. Uber attributes such discrepancies to GPS variance, surge pricing, promotions, and testing — not individual behavioural profiling. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's own 2023 remarks undercut the company's denials somewhat. He said Uber could do better at "targeting of different trips to different drivers based on their preferences or based on behavioural patterns that they're showing us." The company now insists it does not adjust trip prices based on individual driver behaviour and that dynamic pricing merely increases pay on less attractive trips. A 2025 University of Oxford study found substantial cuts in driver earnings after the dynamic algorithm was introduced, though Uber called the data incomplete and selective. The legal terrain is increasingly hostile for Uber in Europe. The Dutch data protection authority fined the company €825 million last month for deactivating driver accounts through automated systems without adequate notice. Uber is appealing. The Worker Info Exchange's founder, James Farrar, previously secured a UK Supreme Court ruling establishing that Uber drivers should have worker rights — a precedent that frames this new action. What makes this case structurally significant is the collision between two forces: AI systems that can personalise extraction at individual granularity and data protection law designed to prevent exactly that. GDPR's provisions on automated decision-making and profiling were written before algorithmic wage-setting became standard practice in gig platforms, but they map onto it with uncomfortable precision. The question is whether courts will recognise personalised price discrimination against workers as the same category of harm as personalised price discrimination against consumers. Uber's simultaneous push toward driverless cars in European cities — from London to Zagreb, initially with human supervision — adds a darker backdrop. The company is building a system that learns everything about its human workforce while simultaneously developing the technology to replace them. The drivers' data, used now to optimise their pay downward, may ultimately train the systems that eliminate their jobs entirely. The claim's £5,000 annual income reduction figure per UK driver, if validated across 241,000 drivers over multiple years, would produce damages in the billions. But the injunctive relief may matter more than the money. If a European court orders Uber to halt personalised dynamic pricing, the precedent would reshape algorithmic labour management across the entire gig economy.
