The taxi driver’s son who drives for Uber
João Ferraz is a taxi driver’s son, but that does not stop him "working for the competition". He has been an Uber driver for three months. And his father? His father does not mind.
Taxis and Ubers do not have to be like oil and water. João Ferraz is proof of exactly that. Aged 20, he has been driving a Citroën C4 Grand Picasso around the Lisbon area since August. He does it for Uber, the controversial private transport service at the centre of a dispute with taxi drivers. It is because of him, and others like him, that many Portuguese taxi drivers are demonstrating this Monday against what they consider to be unfair competition.
The story begins in February this year. João Ferraz was looking for work and found an advertisement for a private driver. “I went to the interview and, when I got there, they told me it was for Uber”, he tells ECO. He accepted straight away, although he knew “very little” about the company. But he had to have held a driving licence for at least two years — and João Ferraz had not. The opportunity was on hold until August, when he started working for the company behind the advertisement: a partner company of Uber that supplies drivers and vehicles.
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 10 October 2016.