NEW YORK CITY, September 16 — As old and new taxi bosses divide workers to lower their wages, three hundred taxi drivers rallied outside Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Manhattan office today as part of the Global Day of Action Against Ubernomics. They were protesting Cuomo’s plan to give Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber & Lyft approval to dispatch fares to an unlimited number of drivers using personal cars across New York State. This move increases competition and attacks driver’s income. In June, taxi drivers in Paris went on strike and blocked major highways to stop the Uber advance there.
TNCs are destroying full-time jobs and incomes for tens of thousands of taxi drivers and their families. In San Francisco, the home of Uber, 3,000 regulated taxis compete against 30,000 private cars. Driver income is down 20 to 30 percent. In Boston, 3,000 taxis are pitted against 10,000 private cars. Driver income is down 25 percent.
At the same time, the traditional taxi companies attack their workforce by classifying drivers as private contractors, even though 85 percent lease their cabs every day and are responsible for gas as well. The 16,000-member Taxi Workers Alliance is trying to re-establish a union in an industry that provides no collective bargaining, unemployment compensation, or healthcare benefits. The New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission presides over the racist super-exploitation of these mainly immigrant South Asian and Black workers, similar to the bosses’ attack on workers in construction, home healthcare, domestic workers, and freelance writers. By 2020, contract workers are expected to make up 40 percent of the U.S. workforce.
All drivers—whether unionized or on contract, whether they’re oppressed by Uber or exploited by the traditional taxi bosses—must unite to build a world where our labour is fully valued. We must fight for a society run by collectivity, not profit, to meet our needs of health, food, housing, and education.
PLP is working among contract workers — from Israel-Palestine to New York City — as they fight for
financial and social security, with the outlook of uniting across lines of work. We will sharpen the class struggle and show that the only security we have as workers comes from building an international movement for communist revolution.
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Immigrant Workers Fight Racism
On Sept 15, a driver/organizer for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) was passing out fliers for the Ubernomics rally to his co-workers at a taxi lot at LaGuardia Airport. He was physically assaulted by a dispatcher, who then called the cops on the driver. All of the drivers got out of their cabs and refused to move. The racist New York Police Department used vans and police dogs to surround the lot full of mostly immigrant drivers from South Asia and the Caribbean. The drivers still refused to get back in their cars. After a tense stand-off, the organizer was released and the dispatcher arrested. Only then did the cab drivers resume work. The organizer spent the night in the hospital, but attended the next day’s rally with his son.