Last month, an Afghan refugee named Ahmad Fawad Yusufi was murdered in San Francisco while driving for Uber. He leaves behind his wife and three children, one of whom is 4 months old. Ahmad lived in Sacramento, and was only in San Francisco to drive for Uber. Ahmad commuted weekly to SF for several days in search of rides, sleeping in his car because his wages from driving couldn’t afford him a hotel room.
Q3 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Uber told local press he wasn’t working at the time, shirking responsibility to Ahmad’s surviving family. They are now reliant solely on GoFundMe to raise three children and take care of Ahmad’s surviving wife.
Here’s a statement from Cherri Murphy, an organizer with Gig Workers Rising, a Bay Area organization supporting the family:
“No worker should have to sleep in their car to make ends meet. For years Uber and Lyft drivers have commuted from all around the Bay to work in the city, sleeping in car parking lots wherever they can. Ahmad was one of those drivers. Uber knows this is happening. When they learned about Ahmad’s killing, Uber washed their hands of him. That’s simply unacceptable. We stand in strong solidarity with Ahmad’s family and for workers everywhere who are endangered or killed on the job.”
How Uber Drivers Are Murdered On The Job
Here is some background on how Uber drivers are murdered on the job:
- It is incredibly important not to accept the false reality Uber contorts: We’ve spoken with countless drivers in our network who’ve driven 40+ hours a week––but when they show us their Uber app, the app would only report “8 hours of active drive time”.
- It is imperative that reporters don’t listen to this distorted reality. When a driver leaves his family in Sacramento on a Friday to drive all weekend for Uber in San Francisco, he is there to drive, not to take a vacation.
- When a driver stops during a 12-hour work day for an hour to get food, or 10 minutes to use the bathroom, they are still on the job for Uber.
- These are basic understandings of work that were accepted decades ago.
- Ahmad is not the first Uber driver killed on the job. This is a systemic issue. Below we’ve listed a small subset of Uber drivers killed on the job in recent years. These murders are just the tip of the iceberg.
- Andre Jamal Bayyan, an Uber driver killed in Inglewood, California in March, 2016.
- Beaudovin Tchakounte, an Uber driver killed in Oxon Hill, Maryland in August, 2019.
- Ceyonne Riley, an UberEats driver killed in New Orleans, Louisiana in July, 2021.
- Cherno “Che” Ceesay, an Uber driver killed King in County, WA in December, 2020.
- David Rosenthal, an Uber driver killed in Denver, Colorado in February, 2019.
- Dhulfiqar Kareem Mseer, an Uber driver killed in Portland, Oregon in December, 2020.
- Filip Kirilov, an Uber driver killed in Okaloosa Island Florida in June, 2018.
- Ganiou Gandonou, an Uber driver killed in the Bronx, NY in March, 2019.
- Grant Nelson, an Uber driver killed in Skokie, Illinois in September, 2017.
- Javier Ramos, an Uber driver killed in Chicago, Illinois in March, 2021.
- Timothy Perkins, an Uber driver killed in Detroit, Michigan in January, 2021.
- Uber knows workers are murdered on the job, yet the corporation fails to support surviving families when a worker is killed making money for the corporation. (Uber will deny this, but reporters should ask the families for the truth).
Letter To Uber
See attached a letter from Ilyas, the brother of murdered Ahmad, to the executives at Uber. Ilyas sent this to Uber this morning over email.
December 16, 2021
From: Mohammad Dawood Mommand
To: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber Chief Legal Officer Tony West, and Uber SVP of Marketing and Public Affairs Jill Hazelbaker
Subject: Uber killed my brother. Here’s what my family demands.
Dear Dara Khosrowshahi, Tony West, and Jill Hazelbaker,
My name is Mohammed. My community calls me Ilyas. Three years ago, our family fled war in Afghanistan, pursuing a safer, happier life for our children. Since we arrived in America, my brother and I have been working for Uber. On weekends we’d leave our families in Sacramento and work in San Francisco for three or four days straight, sleeping in our cars because we couldn’t afford a room. As you know, hundreds of other Afghan drivers do the same thing every weekend.
On November 28th, my brother Ahmad was killed while driving for your company. You lied when you told the press that he wasn’t working for Uber at the time he was killed. He was in San Francisco to work for Uber. It was 5am on a Monday morning. He’d stopped for a break after working for Uber that night.
Uber pledged to support Afghan refugees, yet your company pays wages so low and sustains such precarious working conditions that hundreds of Afghan drivers drive from Sacramento to San Francisco each week and sleep in their cars in unsafe environments – just to earn enough each week to provide for their families. My brother and I did the same. And now after all the work we did for your company, you are turning your backs on us in our time of need.
Now that Uber has stolen his life from us, our family has three demands:
- Access to my brother’s Uber account. We have been trying to access his account since he was killed, but the account has been disabled. Please provide access to our family so that we can gather more information about his work for Uber and the conditions surrounding his death.
- $4 million in immediate aid for our family. Ahmad was the sole provider for his family. He left behind him a wife and three children. His wife, who doesn’t speak English, now has to raise these children on her own. One of his children is four months old. They can’t make next month's rent and will lose their home. You have an ethical obligation to support our family because Ahmad was murdered while working for your company.
- Better pay for all Uber drivers. When my brother and I drove to San Francisco every weekend, we could never afford a hotel room after delivering your customers around the city all night. We drop people like you off to your multi-million dollar homes every day. We deserve a safe, hospitable place to sleep at night afterwards.
I will not rest until my brother’s children are taken care of.
We trust that you will do the right thing.
Ilyas, on behalf of our family
