I recently participated in my first job action, helping organize bike messengers for Uber RUSH, a delivery network the on-demand company started in New York City in April 2014.
Since I joined RUSH last year, Uber has constantly cut messenger rates. They justified these cuts by saying more customers would use RUSH because it is cheaper, meaning more money.
Uber’s drivers—largely African and Middle-Eastern men who left their cab jobs for Uber’s promise of higher wages in less hours—have experienced the same racist cuts under the same premise, and have to work much longer hours now to make ends meet.
NYC messengers in general are young Black and Latin workers. Bike messenger work is dangerous. We constantly have to navigate crazy traffic, potholed streets and overzealous kkkops giving us motor vehicle tickets to generate profit for the bosses. Most messengers work as independent contractors, meaning they receive no benefits (i.e. health insurance, disability, unemployment).
In mid-November, nine RUSH messengers confronted RUSH’s manager at Uber’s Manhattan office, demanding he release tips owed to the fleet: literally wage theft!
One messenger even threatened him with a chair if he kept ignoring them! Later that day, the manager announced Uber would dispense the tips. That showed the power workers have when we unite against the bosses!
The messenger who lead this action announced the strike for December 1. He created a Facebook page promoting it. The plan was for all RUSH messengers to take no jobs for the entire day, then show up at the office in the afternoon to make our demands clear.
Though I found out about the action days later, I sprang into action, leafleting with our list of demands from a post on the FB page.
I held routine conversations with other messengers about how capitalism exploits us as workers and Uber is making money off our efforts. This demanded the need for us to fight back!
I underestimated how much organizing comes into a successful strike. Fourteen days was too little time. Worse, we never held meetings before the action. This meant our “strike” was a disjointed effort that didn’t resonate well.
Most people who clicked “Going” on the FB page didn’t show up. While Facebook can be a organizing tool, it will never replace building true interpersonal relationships with workers.
Uber, in an attempt to curb the strike, offered an extra $50 bribe to messengers who completed five runs that day.
The RUSH manager heard our case in the office before stating the original rates were too expensive for the company to keep up with its massive delivery fleet, and quickly left.
Though I distributed a few CHALLENGEs, I felt upset. Self-critically, I began calling the workers sellouts. Thankfully, fellow comrades struggled with me to understand why that was the wrong line and why this action failed.
I have learned much from this experience.
Paramount is that we should not blame workers, whose minds have been poisoned by capitalist individualism and passivity. And that these actions need real organizing.
But I am making progress. One person I gave CHALLENGE to was turned out to be already familiar with and receptive to the paper. Even better, I gained the courage during this struggle to openly reveal to another worker that I’m a communist—another first for me.
I plan on forming better relationships with my co-workers, and get them to understand that communism is the ultimate solution to this garbage system.
Though I am generally asocial, I’m struggling to change that. Hopefully, I’ll make things happen.