COURIERS and drivers working for gig-economy profiteer Uber launched legal action against the company today over company identity checks, which their union says are racist.

They also held a 24-hour stoppage and appealed for a boycott by customers over the identity checks and pay, which has been supported by the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain says that random facial recognition checks carried out by Uber are leading to disproportionate numbers of black and ethnic minority workers being sacked.

The union says Uber carries out random identity checks by contacting drivers or couriers and telling them to take a “selfie” photograph on their mobile phones.

The photograph is then checked with a computer algorithm based on information the company holds.

Research by the union has shown that darker-skinned workers are five times more likely than their white co-workers to be sacked as a result of the check.

The union says the sackings are carried out “without any due process or evidence of alleged wrongdoing”and that Uber refuses to reveal how the algorithm works.

They have launched a test case at the employment tribunal in London alleging indirect racial discrimination on behalf of a sacked worker.

The union also says that Uber has increased the amount it takes from drivers’ and couriers’ fares.

Striking drivers and couriers staged a protest outside Uber’s headquarters at Aldgate in London.

The union’s general secretary Henry Chango Lopez said: “Uber’s continued use of a facial recognition algorithm that is ineffective on people of colour is discriminatory.

“Hundreds of drivers and couriers who served through the pandemic have lost their jobs without any due process or evidence of wrongdoing and this reflects the larger culture at Uber, which treats its majority-BAME workers as disposable.

“Uber must urgently scrap this racist algorithm and reinstate all the drivers it has unfairly terminated.”

The App Drivers and Couriers Union has also launched a tribunal claim over the same issue.

“The impact of Uber’s facial recognition algorithm reflects a complete lack of care for black people and their livelihoods,” said Black Lives Matter.

“The gig economy, which already creates immense precarity for black key workers, is now further exacerbated by this software that prevents them from working at all — purely based on the colour of their skin. Racist practices such as these must come to an end.”

Uber has been contacted for comment.