Flanked by his pilots, Uber Girds for a battle in London

In a television commercial currently broadcast in the UK, a young woman leaves a bar and prepares to enter an Uber. "I know his license number and he has made 3,000 trips and speaks four languages," she says on camera. "He'll probably make me laugh and he'll be here in a minute."

The global behemoth Uber Inc. wants citizens of one of its largest markets to know that its service is safe for motorcyclists and lucrative for drivers. But this week, his fate will be in the hands of a much smaller audience: a judge at the Westminster Magistrates Court in central London.

Uber A hearing long awaited in a British court begins on 25 June. The company will argue that it is "fair and right" to hold a license in the English capital, after the city's transport authority, Transport for London, has declared, and refused to extend its license d & # 39; operation.

The decision sent shock waves through corporate offices, city regulators, lawyers, labor unions, and the media around the world. Dara Khosrowshahi was only a few weeks after his new role as general manager of Uber when, after the license revelations, he He flew to London and began the process of undoing what many viewers saw as years of bad behavior on the part of his company.

Since then, Uber has been make efforts to appease the regulator, as well as the drivers involved, and the general public. TfL's list of concerns with Uber has more than half to 11 of 25 after being committed to governance changes and apologized for setting up a controversial software, a lawyer for the ride-application hailing said at a hearing in May.

But amid the storm of global debate over the legality of Uber and other Internet transport services, the company has a large group of defenders, at least in London: the drivers themselves same.

During several weeks of trips to London and the surrounding area, the drivers told Bloomberg that the threat of a license revocation is only the latest in a series of worries that they have had in the last two years. But almost all still challenge Uber and the flexibility that it offers them. They built their own support networks using Facebook Inc. and its WhatsApp messaging application. Some even avoided offers to abandon the San Francisco-based company for rival applications, despite offers of more money.

"Before that, we had news of Brexit," said Eduardo Scardua, a Brazilian who led Uber for three years. "It was a disaster, I was very worried, I lived in London for 14 years and only after signing with Uber could I afford to pay for a comfortable home for my family." If they lose the license, I will have to go back and share a house with people I do not know.

He said that friends tell him that they are surprised that he is still working for Uber because of the risk that he will lose his license. But Scardua, formerly a driver for a parcel delivery business, remains loyal to Uber because of the balance between flexibility and competitive compensation. "It would be devastating for me and my family to be without Uber because now I have time to be with my daughter."

Scardua's feelings were echoed by many other drivers who spoke to Bloomberg, some of whom had lucrative day jobs, but they liked to be able to make money for a holiday while driving in the evening. Others described themselves as "family men", able to support a work partner by winning in their Uber vehicle when childcare was available, or spending time at home with their children when that was not the case.

"I have four children," said a pilot, Afruz Miah, who thought it was useless to leave Uber for a competitor because "what happens to Uber will also happen to the other company. ".

Other Uber workers were pragmatists who saw this as an imperfect option, but the best available. Among their complaints were stories of difficulties accessing business support during incidents, company commission charges, the high cost of car rental and trips automatically canceled – something that they imputed to the application. But most said that they preferred Uber to their previous jobs, which often involved long and tiring changes in restaurants, as parcel couriers or as long-distance truck drivers.

Since September, Uber has created 24-hour hotlines, promised better contacts with the police and promised to report any "serious incident" that occurred during a passenger's trip, and now shares the details of the driver's license with passengers. He also began to impose limits on the number of hours that workers could log in before having to take a break. More recently, he announced that he would offer financial insurance premiums to drivers who would cover the loss of income due to illness, injury and other reasons.

But the so-called "concert economy" in which Uber drivers work has experienced another setback in June. The top of the United Kingdom The judges ruled that Pimlico Plumbers Ltd. should have treated one of his traders as a "worker", giving the plumber the right to a vacation pay and suing the company in a decision that could have consequences for further prosecution . In November, Uber lost a call to find out if he should pay overtime and give a vacation to his drivers.

The legal proceedings TfL and Uber are involved, even if the June 25 hearing result is unfavorable to the transport company, it is unlikely that it will be removed from the streets of London anytime soon – the law English allows him to continue to function at least for the next stage of any challenge to the decision. The case could potentially go as far as the Supreme Court, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan said in November that the process could take years.

A TfL spokesman said that he could not comment on Uber's licensing deal while it was underway, and a spokesman for Uber at UK declined to comment.

While the endless legal drama means that they will not have to consider other jobs soon, some drivers have begun to think about it. Many said that they would return to the local private car rental companies they were working on. Others said they would appeal to the government for support.

Joining the iconic black taxi fleet of London offers little attraction for the most part. A driver from Uber, who did not wish to be named, said that more money could be had driving a black cab. But the famous "Knowledge" tests of the London transport regulator are too exhausting to consider – and simply useless in the GPS era, he said.

The economic impact on London taxi drivers has also been significant in some cases. An Uber driver, who also did not want to be named, said that a friend who was earning about 70,000 pounds ($ 92,841) a year while driving a black cab was now earning nearly 50,000 pounds . According to data compiled by TfL, the number of iconic black taxis in London has also fallen to 21,026, the lowest since at least 2009, the first year for which data are available.

Orhan Mezin, who worked for a private minicab rental company for about five years before moving to Uber, said "old friends and bosses keep telling me to come back." But for many drivers, more an easy option. The number of these companies operating in the UK's capital has fallen every year in the last six years, with 2,373 left open last year, according to data compiled by TfL. This is a 25% drop since 2012, the year Uber arrived in London.

Without news of whether Uber's American competitor, Lyft Inc., is closer to opening business in London, almost every driver who spoke to Bloomberg talked about what they consider as the only realistic alternative to Uber: ViaVan.

ViaVan debuted in New York in 2013. A joint application between the US start-up Via Transportation Inc. and Mercedes-Benz Vans of Daimler AG started in New York in 2013. Users request a shared ride via an app and an algorithm finds a suitable vehicle in the same direction. and allowing multiple people to share a vehicle. He began offering his service in Amsterdam in March of this year, and a launch in London followed in April.