Is Being an Uber X Driver a Better Deal for Philadelphia Taxi Drivers?
On 2nd Thought…
A former taxi industry consultant ponders whether Uber might, in the long run, lead to better working atmospheric condition for drivers
Aug. 03, 2016
In early on July, the Philadelphia Parking Dominance decided, somewhat unexpectedly, to temporarily legalize the operation of the Uber X ride-sharing service in Philadelphia. Though operating quite flagrantly and extensively in the City since 2014, Uber X has until now been deemed illegal by the PPA, the agency with regulatory jurisdiction over the taxi industry. Since the PPA has fewer than a dozen agents to police the operation of ane,600 medallion cabs—let alone an estimated 12,000 Uber Ten drivers—enforcement has been negligible at best. (The Uber Black service has been legal since it entered the Philadelphia market, since information technology operates through traditional limousine companies that are licensed by the PPA.)
But citing the Democratic National Convention and the recent decommissioning of ane-third of SEPTA'south regional rails fleet due to equipment issues, the PPA made a unilateral decision to let Uber 10 to operate for ninety days, and the state legislature legalized this conclusion at the end of its session. The Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania (TWA), which represents thousands of medallion cab drivers, immediately filed suit to stop the move. At a hearing held on July 22, a judge allowed the 90-day trial menstruation to keep, but hinted that regulatory clarity and parity between medallions cabs and ride-sharing services must be the goal.
For the by few months, information technology seemed as if the legislative process in Harrisburg might yield a compromise that at to the lowest degree took into consideration the needs of all sides of this contentious fence—Uber and its drivers, the medallion industry, taxi workers, consumers, and others, including the disability rights customs, which has contended that Uber 10 fails to provide sufficient service to passengers in wheelchairs.
As much as I take serious reservations about Uber's Large Brother-ish technologies of control and the entire "sharing" economy's reliance on the exploitative "independent contractor" model, I call back Uber represents mayhap a ameliorate opportunity for drivers to build some existent ability against a single major company that, whether it will always admit it or not, is basically an employer.
Every bit anyone not living on Mars knows, Uber connects owners of ordinary vehicles to customers seeking on-demand bespeak-to-point transportation using a mobile application that allows customers to precisely track the arrival of their ride and pay in via credit card. Uber has sparked major debates in every "medallion" urban center it enters, equally it challenges the right of regulators to control the operation of on-need transportation and the right of the medallion owners to maintain an oligopoly over the supply of commanded vehicles. Questions accept been raised virtually the safety of Uber X vehicles, drivers' operating without a commercial drivers' license, sufficiency of insurance, and adequacy of groundwork checks, to name a few.
Uber has also sparked controversy in the arena of labor police, since Uber claims that its drivers are "contained contractors" and not "employees," despite evidence that Uber exerts substantial control over drivers' working weather via its engineering science. As someone who organized depression-wage workers professionally for a decade, and who also served a brief stint in a consulting function as executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Taxi Clan as it sought to aggrandize wheelchair accessibility, this controversy highlights for me some of the existent contradictions in this evolving space.
Showtime, in that location are few industries more by and large exploitative than the taxi industry. Medallion owners have all the money and most of the ability. With medallions trading at half a 1000000 dollars or more in Philadelphia, they are out of reach of ordinary drivers (though there are still a considerable number of drivers who bought medallions back in the 1990s when they were inexpensive and have held on to them). Drivers lease this piece of metal from the owner, purchase insurance from brokers (often major medallion owners themselves), and often lease cars from them too. Drivers must obtain a taxi license, at personal expense. Finally, they must go a "member" of a dispatch "association," whose colors and logo they display.
In sum, taxi workers in the medallion system are hundreds of dollars in the hole before their first shift begins. The whole organization bears more than a slight resemblance to sharecropping.
Admirably, leaders like TWA's Ronald Blount have stepped up and done some of the Metropolis'due south best organizing in recent years. They have helped move the needle for drivers, in many instances working with the medallion owners for concessions from the PPA. The drivers take lobbied, used the courts, and taken to the streets. They take as well formed a cooperatively owned acceleration visitor. This is all bang-up and necessary stuff, from my perspective
Withal even this concerted organizing has not challenged or changed the basic neofeudal structure of the arrangement. Drivers continue to be in a precarious legal situation, in which they have few labor rights, not even workers comp—a real shame considering that taxi piece of work is among the most dangerous of occupations.
Along comes Uber, a tech company that bends if not breaks most of the rules. Equally is the case with most medallion taxi drivers, Uber drivers are responsible for providing the car and insurance. Even so unlike medallion cabs, in which drivers get much if not near of their fares from street hails and not the acceleration arrangement, Uber drivers are completely subject to the control of the Uber software. Ultimately, I believe, they will accept a strong case to be classified as workers and thus field of study to the protections of labor law. (In fact, on July 21 a federal judge granted Uber Blackness drivers standing as a class in a case that could decide this question.)
In sum, taxi workers in the medallion system are hundreds of dollars in the hole before their first shift begins. The whole system bears more than a slight resemblance to sharecropping.
One matter is certain: Uber has created a superior transportation system, from the point of view of consumers. This is more evident in sprawling cities with inadequate mass transit, like Atlanta or Orlando, than it is in NYC or Philly, but even here it is far easier to go an Uber than a medallion cab, at least everywhere outside of Center City. As a resident of a neighborhood outside the Center City core, I by and large have to walk several blocks to hail a cab, or I can phone call a dispatch service and wait a totally unpredictable 5 to 25 minutes. With Uber, I know precisely when my ride will testify upwards.
People ask why the medallion cabs don't adopt Uber-similar technology. The answer is unproblematic: Medallion owners, those with the capital, are not running a transportation system, but are basically rent-seeking "landlords," so to speak. They get paid by the drivers regardless of whether a single machine picks upwards a single passenger.
The dispatch companies could potentially create such a system, but there are about a dozen of them in Philly and in order to be every bit efficient as Uber they'd take to interact. (To be fair: Taxi Magic's "Adjourn" app is a step in the correct management, merely information technology still only represents a fraction of the City's medallion cabs because only a few of the dispatch companies use the Taxi Magic system, and it has yet to accept off.) They'd as well have to exert more command over the labor of their members—the drivers—thereby irresolute the primal relationship so they become more than like employers. This would in turn open themselves to both adherence to basic labor protections like minimum wage laws and workmen'southward comp equally well as the threat of collective bargaining—the avoidance of which was one of the reasons for the medallion and "contained contractor" system to brainstorm with.
And so I find myself faced with a dilemma: I admire few organizations equally much as the TWA. Only I am skeptical that even their smart and strategic fight to improve the medallion system is going to atomic number 82 to annihilation like real structural power for drivers. Every bit much as I have serious reservations near Uber's Big Brother-ish technologies of control and the entire "sharing" economy'due south reliance on the exploitative "independent contractor" model, I think Uber represents perhaps a improve opportunity for drivers to build some real power against a single major company that, whether it volition ever acknowledge it or not, is basically an employer. My bet is that the courts will eventually agree and Uber drivers volition be able to act like workers and need more rights, including bargaining rights. If this happens, information technology volition be interesting to run across how the medallion industry—both owners and drivers—reacts.
Jeff Hornstein, former executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Taxi Association, is a resident of Queen Hamlet.
Photo header: Flickr/Mark Warner 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/on-second-thought/
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