Uber Files: ex-lobbyist Mark MacGann tackles Macron on jobs created in France

Looking back, "there's nothing to be proud of" for letting Uber grow.

This is what the "whistleblower" and ex-corporate lobbyist Mark MacGann believes, questioned this Wednesday during the Web Summit in Lisbon on the remarks of Emmanuel Macron who had welcomed the jobs thus created. in the country.

“If you look at the facts on the streets of Paris and other cities, the competition is fierce between taxis and other modes of transport like Uber.

There are so many people barely earning enough to live on that I don't think there's anything to be proud of,” said the former Uber Europe lobbyist, who is behind the Uber files, revealed. this summer in France by the newspaper Le Monde.

As part of this investigation involving some forty international newspapers and based on thousands of internal documents from the American company of private drivers Uber, the evening daily had concluded that there was a "secret deal" between the company and Emmanuel Macron when he was François Hollande's Minister of Economy (2014-2016).

“Big misunderstanding”

Two days after the revelations, the Head of State had assumed that he had met the leaders of the company and said he was “super proud” insisting on “the thousands of jobs created”.

"I especially helped young people, who were not offered jobs, who came from difficult neighborhoods, who had no job opportunities to find jobs for the first time in their lives and for thousands of them”, had pleaded President Macron.

“There is a big misunderstanding”, reacted Mark MacGann, this Wednesday.

"We were always careful to say that we would not create jobs, that we did not want to have to pay social protections" to the drivers, he said.

"I told Emmanuel Macron directly that we were going to create 70,000 entrepreneurs in Paris if he completely lowered the regulations to become a private driver," he said, however.

"I think that we must always be humble and have the benefit of hindsight", he added, also regretting that France is now trying to "weaken", according to him, the European directive on the platform work, under negotiation in Brussels.

"Uber and the other platforms spend a lot of money to weaken" this regulation, and make it more difficult for entrepreneurs who would like to see their contract reclassified as an employment contract.

“It is very disappointing that a company that claims to have fundamentally changed continues to spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying against the most basic human rights,” he said.