Garrett Camp

When Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009, they built the company on a specific legal theory: drivers were independent contractors, not employees. This classification was not incidental to the business model — it was the business model. Classifying drivers as contractors meant Uber bore none of the employment costs that a company running cars with employed drivers would have to carry: no minimum wage floor, no holiday pay accrual, no workers' compensation insurance, no unemployment contributions. The margin advantage was structural. For more than a decade, Uber fought every legal challenge to that classification across multiple jurisdictions. In February 2021, the UK Supreme Court ruled 7-0 in Uber BV v. Aslam [2021] UKSC 5 — the most authoritative ruling on the question in the English-speaking world. The court found that Uber drivers are 'workers' under UK employment law, that their working time begins when the app is on, and that Uber's own contractual framing was inconsistent with the reality of the relationship. The factual findings were unambiguous: Uber set the fare, allocated the work, tracked drivers' performance, and could deactivate them. The 'contractor' classification was a legal fiction. In California, the same fight played out at the ballot box. In May 2020, California's attorney general sued Uber and Lyft, alleging that approximately 150,000 California drivers had been misclassified. That October, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates spent $224 million on Yes on Proposition 22 — the most expensive ballot measure in California history — to carve a gig-economy exemption from AB5, the law that would have required driver reclassification. Similar rulings followed in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Garrett Camp co-founded Uber and held a board seat from 2009 through 2020. He did not run day-to-day operations — Travis Kalanick served as CEO until 2017. Camp was not the person who made misclassification decisions in specific markets or managed the company's legal strategy. The attribution this dossier applies is co-founder accountability: Camp co-founded a company built on this model, held a board seat through the years it was litigated and fought at the ballot box, and cashed out approximately $5.3 billion at the 2019 IPO. The workers whose labor built that value were the workers the UK Supreme Court found had been denied minimum wage and holiday pay for years.

• —2009: Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick co-found Uber. Company built from the start on driver-as-independent-contractor classification.
• —~150,000 California drivers misclassified per California AG lawsuit (May 2020, Attorney General Xavier Becerra).
• —Millions of UK driver-hours performed at sub-minimum wage rates before 2021 Supreme Court ruling. Similar findings in France, Netherlands, and Switzerland.
• —February 19, 2021: UK Supreme Court rules 7-0 in Uber BV v. Aslam [2021] UKSC 5. Uber drivers are 'workers' entitled to minimum wage and holiday pay. Working time = whenever app is on. Uber's contractor framing rejected as a legal fiction.
• —October 2020: Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates spend $224M on Yes on Prop 22 — most expensive ballot measure in California history — to override AB5 driver protections.
• —Camp's Uber IPO stake: ~$5.3B at May 2019 IPO.
• —Camp held a Uber board seat from founding (2009) through 2020. He was not Uber's day-to-day CEO; Travis Kalanick held that role until 2017.
• —Zero criminal charges filed against any Uber co-founder or executive for the misclassification scheme.