Management at the rideshare app company Uber filed a last-minute petition to block a scheduled 11% pay raise for its New York City drivers—and the drivers have taken offense.
On Nov. 15, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) approved a pay raise for ride-hail app and taxi drivers that was supposed to go into effect Monday, Dec. 19, but Uber’s last-minute petition, which was granted by Judge Arthur Engoron, blocked that raise. The TLC sent out a tweet stating that “on 11/15/22, TLC voted to raise FHV [for-hire vehicle] driver pay rates. Uber has sued the city to strike down the rules, & a judge has stopped the rates from taking effect until the lawsuit is resolved.
“TLC is appealing and aggressively fighting to move forward with the rule.”
Uber and Lyft drivers say they quickly organized Zoom meetings to arrange protests for Monday morning. Drivers took themselves off the app for the day and instead blocked traffic along downtown Brooklyn’s Tillary Street during the morning rush hour and caravanned across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan; members of the Independent Drivers Guild held a speak-out outside the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse on Foley Square; and those with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) held a press conference in front of Uber’s Manhattan headquarters—they had called on their membership to go on a 24-hour strike against Uber, beginning at 12:01 a.m. and ending at 11:59 p.m. that day.
“We are here to stop Uber. Without us drivers, there’s no Uber,” said driver Ibrahim Zoure as part of those gathered in the cold in front of Uber’s headquarters at 3 World Trade Center—many of whom carried placards that read “Uber the Grinch stole our raise!” “We’re here to let them know that we need respect and they should give it to us—and we will take our respect. Because we have families, and we should be able to spend time with our families.”
NY State Sen. Jessica Ramos says she represents neighborhoods in Queens where the largest number of New York City’s for-hire vehicle drivers live. “I’m here to stand with my neighbors as we fight against one of the baddest employers in the state of New York,” she said at the NYTWA press conference. “Uber continues to put the burden of the job entirely on the drivers while they reap the profits, enjoy bonuses and are going to be able to give their families a nice holiday.
“Meanwhile, the men standing behind me on strike today who are fathers, sons, grandfathers yearning to offer their children a nice Christmas, a nice holiday, won’t be able to do so because of Uber’s greed—because of them suing against this raise that is so well deserved by these drivers.”
NYC Council Member Shekar Krishnan, who also represents northwestern Queens, called Uber’s actions offensive: “It’s not the first time that Uber has done [this], they’ve done it…in California, too…It is time that this company recognize that the billions that it makes in profits, that it needs to treat the workers better, that it needs to abide by city decisions and pay the workers more. Respect our drivers, protect their rights—that is the message that we send loud and clear.”
The company, formally named Uber Technologies Inc., claims in its petition not to be against paying its riders fair compensation but argues that the TLC’s reasons for determining the pay raise were based on a specific set of months when inflation was high. “[T]he Commission has proposed dramatic, unprecedented and unsupported hikes, purportedly for inflation, to the minimum per mile and per minute rates paid to Drivers, which are set to take effect on December 19, 2022,” Uber claimed in its petition. “The Commission achieved these hikes using an index that the Commission has never used before and, after the December 19, 2022 rate hikes, will not use again, and by arbitrarily selecting the months of data from the index to compare. The company believes that using those metrics would lead to Uber being forced to spend between $21 and $23 million per month to pay its drivers.”