Striking Uber, Lyft Drivers Launch NYC Caravan to Demand An End to Lockouts, Deactivation
This week’s caravan reportedly contained more than 1,000 cabs, and stretched for 18 blocks at its peak. Photos/Steve Wishnia
By Steve Wishnia
Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers formed a massive caravan from Hudson Yards to City Hall Oct. 23, marking a one-day strike to protest the companies locking drivers out of their apps to avoid triggering an increase in the drivers’ share of fares.
“We are here to stop Uber and Lyft from locking us out, and to raise our pay,” driver Said Abbaby told Work-Bites as the procession moved south from 34th Street and 11th Avenue. “We’re not making enough money to pay our bills.”
The procession wended down the West Side Highway, a river of black Suburbans, Camrys, and RAV4s salted with white Siennas and gray Altimas, festooned with “Strike!” and “Stop Unfair Deactivations!” signs. They rolled east on Canal Street and south on Broadway, honking their horns in and out of rhythm—a journey of almost 90 minutes. Abbaby, an Egyptian immigrant from Staten Island who’s been driving for both companies for several years, called it the biggest driver protest he’s participated in.
“With cars, you have much more effect,” he said.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which organized the strike, estimated that the caravan contained more than 1,000 cabs, and stretched for 18 blocks at its peak.
NYTWA head Bhairavi Desai says app company lockouts are a like a “knife on drivers’ necks.”
NYTWA head Bhairavi Desai says the two companies have been using the lockouts “to manipulate the data.” The city’s 2018 law, which set a minimum wage for app-based drivers, relies on a formula that requires the companies to pay drivers a larger share of the fare when cabs are empty more often: if the industry “utilization rate” for cabs, the percentage of time drivers on the app have a passenger, falls below a certain percentage, technically 58% but in practice less. If fewer drivers are on the app, the utilization rate looks higher than it really is.
Uber began locking out drivers in May, but stopped in early September, according to NYTWA. Lyft, which generally has a lower utilization rate, has continued its lockouts, drivers say.
The union has filed a petition with the city Taxi and Limousine Commission for it to consider only utilization-rate data from before mid-May when it sets pay rates for 2025. The TLC’s decision is due Nov. 4.
Desai wants the TLC to outlaw lockouts. “They should not be allowed to engage in lockouts to lower drivers’ wages,” she says. “This is a loophole the companies have found. The threat remains a knife on drivers’ necks.”
“I’ve been suffering since they locked us out,” says Fatima Meshal, 63, of Queens, whose family immigrated from Egypt when she was 13. She’s been driving for both companies for almost 10 years, and the Lyft lockouts—“99% of the time”—have particularly hurt, as she can’t pick up enough work from Uber to make up for the lost income.
She says she used to make $500 a week from Lyft.
“This week, I did $17.65,” she adds. She estimates that she now makes about $100 for an 8-10-hour shift.
“My family relies on me heavily,” she says. “I have six kids. I get in my car every week never knowing. It’s unpredictable.”
Fatima Meshal, 63, drives for both Uber and Lyft—and still can’t make ends meet.
Abbasy estimates the lockouts have cost him 40% of his income before expenses. The Lyft app, he adds, is sometimes only open during the morning and afternoon rush hours.
He also has a problem with the companies’ commissions. They used to take 25% to 30% of the fare, but now they take more than half on some trips, he says, and “if you ask them why, they tell you it’s not your business.”
At City Hall
The deal with Uber and Lyft that was supposed to phase out lockouts, announced by Mayor Eric Adams July 31, actually “allows for Uber to end its lockouts only if Lyft essentially increases its lockouts,” NYTWA said in August.
Uber, according to the mayor’s office, promised to stop locking drivers out by Labor Day if Lyft maintained an annual utilization rate of 50%. Uber had objected to the prospect of having to pay drivers more to compensate for Lyft consistently having lower utilization. But the deal did not obligate Lyft to end lockouts, and continuing them could help it raise its utilization rate.
That rate is important, Desai says, because it means drivers get paid even when their cabs are empty. While Seattle also has a minimum wage based on utilization rate, she notes, in Massachusetts, which promises drivers a $36-an-hour minimum under an agreement between Uber and the state’s attorney general, drivers are only counted as working when they have a fare.
Having to pay drivers for time when they’re working but don’t have a fare runs into conflict with the app-cab companies’ business model of keeping as many drivers on the street as possible. “They overhire and they overfire,” Desai says.
A bill introduced in the City Council would indirectly affect lockouts. Intro 276, sponsored by Councilmember Shekar Krishnan (D-Queens) and 11 others, is primarily intended to prohibit app-taxi companies from firing drivers—“deactivating” them, cutting them off from access to the platform—without a “just cause” and due process. But it also defines deactivation as including companies denying drivers access for either 72 hours straight or for at least 72 hours within a 180-day period.