‘We Need to Break Them Down!’ Uber, Lyft Drivers in NYC Call 24-Hour Strike Against Lockouts
Uber and Lyft drivers in New York City are threatening to strike on October 23 to stop corporate lockouts. Photos/Steve Wishnia
By Steve Wishnia
Some 500 Uber and Lyft drivers rallied near City Hall September 4, announcing that they will go on strike October 23 if the app-cab companies don’t stop locking out drivers to avoid having to pay them minimum wage.
Lyft driver MD Azizul Haque, 34, of Jackson Heights, estimates he’s lost close to half his income from being locked out of access to the app for as many as five hours per shift.
“If you want to go to rest room, or food, you cannot get back in,” he told Work-Bites before the rally. The only notice drivers get is a message blaming the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s “regulations on driver utilization” and telling them to “please try again at a busier time.”
“We are here because we’ve been pushed to the brink,” longtime driver Alpha Barry told the rally.
“Uber wants to get away with paying drivers less,” New York Taxi Workers Alliance head Bhairavi Desai told the crowd. “We are ready for a 24-hour strike to shut the apps down.”
We Are Not Robots: Uber Driver Johan Gil and daughter rally in New York City this week.
Uber began locking drivers out of the app during shifts in May, and Lyft followed in June. The goal was to avoid having to pay drivers a bigger share of fares to ensure that they actually make the city’s minimum wage for app-based drivers, $34.98 an hour gross and $20.29 after expenses such as gas, insurance, and maintenance. The TLC calculates the drivers’ share based on the “utilization rate,” the average percentage of time they have a fare. If that rate for this year averages below 53%, as it did for January through May, the drivers’ share would go up in January.
Denying drivers access to the app in the middle of a shift creates the illusion that there are fewer empty cabs on the street, while leaving drivers idle and waiting.
Drivers’ stories
Uber driver Johan Gil of Queens, a Colombian immigrant with a 10-year-old daughter, says the lockouts have extended his shifts from 10 hours to 15 or more. “How can I spend time with my family?” he asks.
He drove a yellow cab for years before switching to Uber seven years ago, fed up with the high fees he was paying to lease decrepit old cabs. But he shows a recent trip record on his phone. The fare was $25.53 for a 15-minute ride in Manhattan. But Uber took a 35% commission, and the city took 22%, leaving him with only $11.20—before expenses.
“I see that Uber uses us,” he told Work-Bites.”
Oumar Kantako, 43, of the Bronx, an Uber driver since 2012, said he is locked out “almost every day.” Last week, he adds, he started a shift at 8 p.m. and was locked out from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m.
“Sometimes they get one $20 fare and then they’re locked out,” says Ishtiaq Ahmed, an Uber driver since 2012.
App-based drivers in New York City are prepared to put the brakes on Uber and Lyft next month.
MD Azizul Haque, originally from Bangladesh, drove a yellow cab for two years, then switched to Lyft five years ago, because they “guaranteed a good income.”
But since the lockouts began, his income for working 40 to 50 hours a week has been reduced from $1,500 to $2,000 (before expenses) to $1,000.
“We need the regulations to protect the drivers’ income,” he says. “I cannot work 24 hours.”
“This is the worst year,” says Blerim Skora, a father of three who immigrated from Albania in the 1980s. Before the lockouts, he says he averaged 35 trips per shift—but now, he’s down to 10.
Uber driver Nusrat Jahan told the rally that she chose to work for the app to have a flexible schedule, to have time to drop her children off at school and take care of her 80-year-old mother.
“My earning is now half,” she said—and she still has to make payments on her car loan.
NYTWA seeks new TLC rules
The city has been “playing catch-up” with trying to regulate app-based cabs since they arrived in the city 12 years ago and upended the 75-year-old system of regulating taxis, state Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens) said.
NYTWA head Bhairavi Desai says both Uber and Lyft are creating artificial scarcity, locking out drivers even during peak periods when the apps are charging surge-pricing rates.
“A company that is only an algorithm is putting all its overhead on you,” she told drivers.
NYTWA also submitted a rulemaking petition to the TLC, demanding that it flatly prohibit lockouts, raise both the per-mile and per-minute pay rates for app-based drivers, and base those rates on the cars’ actual utilization rates. The commission has until Nov. 4 to respond.
Desai accused the companies of creating an artificial scarcity, locking out drivers even during peak periods when the apps are charging surge-pricing rates.
“With one move, they are underpaying the drivers and overcharging the public,” she told the rally.
The crowd then marched south on Broadway, containing multitudes of Bangladeshi men in checked shirts and handfuls of West Africans in robes and Muslim prayer hats, with Desai leading chants of “ready to strike” and “No drivers, no Uber” through a bullhorn from the sunroof of a black Toyota SUV cab. It turned west towards Uber’s Manhattan offices in the World Trade Center, but was channeled onto the sidewalk by police and wound up in Liberty Plaza.
“I’ve never seen hardship like this,” said Alpha Barry, who began driving a yellow cab 21 years ago, just after he arrived from Guinea.
“We were making money then,” he recalled.
But now, “every driver is complaining” about the lockouts, he continued. “I also blame our leaders, the TLC and the mayor and the governor.”
Uber and Lyft, he said, destroyed both the yellow-cab business and more driver-friendly apps such as Gett and Via.
“We need to break them down, because they have too much power,” he added.