The sanction of 122,910 euros from the court of the Catalan Competition Authority (ACCO) to Elite Taxi announced this Tuesday for boycotting Uber opens a new war in the sector on the streets of Barcelona. Taxi drivers are not only not willing to drop a single euro. They are also determined to mount protests to the point of decapitating ACCO itself.
This independent body of the Generalitat designed to ensure that free competition prevails in the markets understands that the campaign launched a couple of years ago by the main association of taxi drivers in the metropolitan area of ??Barcelona so that no colleague would dare to work with the application of the multinational from San Francisco completely contravenes the norms of the market. To a large extent, as a result of this campaign, Uber never managed to ensure that its services provided through taxi drivers reached the usual quality parameters in other cities. Eventually the company got fed up and turned to the ACCO.
Shortly after the ruling of the court of this entity was known, Alberto Álvarez, alias Tito, founder and spokesperson for Élite Taxi, responded extremely angrily that they will not pay a single euro, that they will drop the fine in court, that this September they will start a growing campaign of protests aimed at achieving the dismissal of the main leaders of the ACCO, that their lawyers are already preparing a strong response, that the only thing that Élite Taxi did was inform the taxi drivers of the supposed dangers that collaborating with this company entails for the profession. The ACCO, for its part, maintains in its resolution that Élite Taxi disseminated “personal data, license numbers and registration numbers of the affiliated taxi drivers” and on top of that “obstructed their activity.” Competition also reproaches the entity that will disclose among the drivers “guidelines on how pressure and coercion actions should be carried out against the other taxi drivers collaborating with Uber and other operators.”
“We rely on freedom of expression and information,” Álvarez added. This is an attack on fundamental freedoms. All we did was explain the situation to our colleagues, that Uber’s siren songs are nothing more than a Trojan horse destined to destroy taxi drivers. This fine has no meaning or future. And this court of incompetence, either. They may be committing prevarication. Do you think you can just drop all this on us and go on vacation? And the Government thinks that nothing is happening here, that nothing is going to happen? politicians will have to position themselves. No one will be able to stand aside. If we have really harassed our colleagues so much who wanted to work with the Uber app, why doesn’t any criminal court intervene, why don’t they criminally charge us? Now we are going to rest, and in September they will see”.
In this way, the leader of the taxi drivers in the metropolitan area tries to separate Elite Taxi from the most serious hostilities that a few professionals suffered at that time. We are talking about blacklists distributed by Telegram of taxi drivers willing to work with Uber, their names, their licenses, their license plates… Also a torrent of insults and even threats, some uttered on social networks and others on the stops and at traffic lights. And also of some aggressions. Two years ago a taxi woke up burned in Badalona, ??with the word Uber written on the battered hood. “No one could ever prove anything about it,” Álvarez wanted to settle on this matter.
