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Hundreds Of Rideshare Drivers Form Tennessee Drivers’ Union

On Tuesday, August 20, hundreds of rideshare drivers voted to form the Tennessee Drivers’ Union and to strike on Friday, August 30 to address worsening working conditions at the Nashville International Airport. Workers are striking strategically on Labor Day weekend, as they recognize that it is one of the busiest travel weekends of the year. These drivers represent 14 different nationalities and speak multiple languages. “We are many nations working for [a] common goal,” says the co-president of the Tennessee Drivers’ Union. “If we don’t come together as people striving for their rights then we will continue to suffer and [be] robbed by two giants, Uber and Lyft.”

Drivers Rally After Getting Kicked Out Of Uber And Lyft Apps

Rideshare drivers rallied at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan Wednesday, protesting getting locked out of the Uber and Lyft apps on their shifts. They chanted, “No drivers, no Uber.” In order to operate, the Taxi and Limousine Commission said Uber and Lyft, combined, need to have passengers riding in their cars 53% of the time. In March 2023, the TLC adjusted the pay formula for the apps for the “empty time component.” That is, the time drivers spend on duty waiting to dispatch with no passenger in their car. City regulations require drivers to be compensated for the time they’re waiting for a dispatch. Uber and Lyft locked drivers out of the app during their shifts.

Cities Are Taking On Uber’s Bullying

If you’ve taken an Uber ride recently, you’ve probably noticed it cost a lot more than a few years ago. Why is that? We conducted the largest-ever study of rideshare fares to find out, and discovered a story of gaslighting and corporate greed that squeezes rideshare drivers and riders alike, while funneling our money to banks and billionaires. This month, Minneapolis passed an ordinance requiring rideshare corporations to pay drivers at least $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute. In a desperate attempt to block the pay floor, Uber and Lyft are threatening to leave the city, claiming that such a requirement would make rides too expensive for residents.

Driver-Owned Ride-Hailing App Is Putting Its Foot On The Accelerator

Sometimes the money’s good, sometimes not so good. Either way, Shaun Beckles loves the human aspect of working as a for-hire vehicle driver — getting to know fares even just a little in passing, gaining a glimpse into so many different lives over the course of a single shift. “I’ve always liked driving for the mere fact that you get to meet some interesting people who can connect with your passion, you’d be surprised,” says Beckles, now operations manager at The Drivers Cooperative. The driver-owned ride-hailing platform, which launched in 2021, is hitting some major milestones this year: It has a new app, it’s the official transportation partner for Juneteenth NY, and

Gig Work Is Getting Dangerous

In recent months, stories of rideshare drivers and delivery workers carjacked, robbed, or even killed on the job have made headlines around the country. Now, growing research shows that there is an all-out crisis in app-based work. This May, Gig Workers Rising, PowerSwitch Action, and ACRE released new research that suggests the safety crisis among app workers — especially app workers of color — is escalating. They found that in 2022, at least 31 app workers — three-quarters of them people of color — were murdered while working. That’s more app workers murdered than we have been able to identify in any prior year.

Take This Job And Love It

In the six years that Michael Ugwu has worked as an Uber driver in New York City, he’s seen a growing share of his earnings diverted into venture capitalists’ pockets. Uber and Lyft require workers to assume a myriad of expenses that can quickly trap drivers like Ugwu into debt and poverty. “Currently, they’re taking out between 35 to 40 percent, when you add up all the deductions,” Ugwu says. “You end up not having enough to pay rent, maintain the car, pay the car loan, and buy gas. They’re continuously ripping us off.” By 2017, rideshare drivers were earning less than half what they made just four years earlier, a study found. Meanwhile, executives at Lyft and Uber have raked in tens of millions of dollars in compensation.

Court Rules California Gig Worker Initiative Is Unconstitutional

A California judge on Friday ruled that a 2020 ballot measure exempting rideshare and food delivery drivers from a state labor law is unconstitutional because it infringes on the Legislature’s power to set workplace standards. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch wrote Proposition 22 is unconstitutional because “it limits the power of a future Legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law.” That makes the entire ballot measure unenforceable, Roesch said. Roesch further wrote that a provision in the initiative that prevents the Legislature from granting collective-bargaining rights to drivers is unconstitutional because it “appears only to protect the economic interests of the network companies in having a divided, ununionized workforce.”

You Can Ditch Uber For A Driver-Owned Rideshare App

The thank-you banners are down, but New York City residents have a real opportunity to show their appreciation for a population of low-paid, primarily immigrant frontline workers. New York City residents can help now by ditching Uber and Lyft for a competing driver-owned alternative app called “Co-op Ride,” created by the mostly volunteer-run Drivers Cooperative. If Co-op’s proposal plays out, drivers could make more money while their passengers, particularly those in underserved communities, could end up paying less for rides. Launched this past weekend and now available to New York City residents ****in the App Store and Google Play, Co-op Ride is a cooperative, driver-owned business.

Union Leaders: No Deals With Uber And Lyft!

Trade union members, and everyone else supportive of workers’ rights, should be very concerned about proposed legislation in New York, Massachusetts, and other states that would allow limited bargaining rights for independent contractors of Transportation Networked Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft.

UK Top Court Gives Uber Drivers Benefits In Landmark Ruling

London - Uber drivers in Britain should be classed as “workers” and not self-employed, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled Friday, in a decision that threatens the company’s business model and holds broader implications for the so-called gig economy. The ruling paves the way for Uber drivers to get benefits such as paid holidays and the minimum wage, handing defeat to the ride-hailing giant in the culmination of a long-running legal battle. The Supreme Court’s seven judges unanimously rejected Uber’s appeal against an employment tribunal ruling, which had found that two Uber drivers were “workers” under British law. Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar, the two drivers, cheered the outcome.

Uber And Lyft Are Preparing To Block Labor Rights For Gig Economy Workers

After California passed a law extending labor protections to gig economy workers, Uber, Lyft, and other gig economy employers overturned it on election day 2020 with a $200 million ballot referendum campaign. Over the past year, the same companies have been setting up infrastructure to ensure that app-based drivers and other gig economy workers do not win labor rights in New York. Tactics used by Uber and Lyft in their campaign to deny workers protections included threatening to shut down their apps entirely in California if forced to comply with the law giving drivers employment status and flooding drivers’ apps with misleading pop-up messages about the initiative – called Proposition 22  – in the run-up to the November election.

Driver Lawsuit Says Uber And Lyft’s Proposition 22 Is Unconstitutional

A trio of ride-hail drivers filed a lawsuit in California's Supreme Court on Tuesday alleging Proposition 22 is unconstitutional. The proposition was voted into law by California residents in November and ensures gig workers in the state are classified as independent contractors, rather than employees. Proposition 22 was authored by gig economy companies, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart, which spent more than $205 million to get the ballot measure passed. It exempts the companies from a state law requiring that they treat their workers as employees. The proposition has only been in effect for one month and already it's facing challenges.

NYC Drivers Cooperative Aims To Smash Uber’s Exploitative Model

Ken Lewis grew up on the island of Grena­da, and wit­nessed the pro­gres­sive after­math of its 1979 rev­o­lu­tion. ​“I remem­ber the pow­er of coop­er­a­tives, peo­ple get­ting land, turn­ing places that were bar­ren into pro­duc­tive places,” he says. That image stayed with him after he moved to New York City for grad school and start­ed dri­ving a taxi on the side. Now, sev­er­al decades lat­er, Lewis is final­ly get­ting a chance to put the pow­er of coop­er­a­tives into prac­tice, in ser­vice of the dri­vers he worked with for so long.  He is one of three cofounders of The Dri­vers Coop­er­a­tive (TDC), which aims to real­ize a long-held dream of social­ly con­scious New York­ers in a hur­ry: a rideshar­ing app that you can feel good about.

Uber Drivers Strike As Execs Make Millions Off IPO

With the ring of a bell, controversial former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick became a billionaire on Friday when the ridesharing company made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. But while Uber execs former and current cashed in on the IPO, the drivers that actually build the company’s wealth won’t see nearly that kind of payout. “On a bad day — and there’s too many of those bad days — you make less than minimum wage after expenses,” says Vincent Suen, a rideshare driver based in Los Angeles.

Outside Uber HQ, Drivers Demand A Cut Of The Riches

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Just days ahead of Silicon Valley’s most hyped mega-IPO, a group of a several hundred Uber drivers gathered in front of the company’s San Francisco headquarters and took over the street in a protest demanding fair pay, benefits, and greater transparency from the rideshare giant. Friday is set to be the biggest day in Uber’s history: The company is going public and listing on the New York Stock Exchange in one of the biggest IPOs in American history. It’s by far the biggest IPO this year—a year full of Silicon Valley companies hitting the stock market.
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