This Week In Rideshare: Pay, Protests, and Unions.
Pay goes down, protests fire up and unions go quiet. LegalRideshare breaks it down.
DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF DRIVER PAY
Has driver pay worsened because Uber stopped innovating? That’s one opinion. View From The Wing adds:
Now Uber has been less transparent and no one complains about surges anymore. Instead of telling you they’re charging 2 or 4 times as much for a ride, they just quote you a price. And Uber keeps most of it. They have tipping, but they pay drivers less.
So Uber is great compared to taxis but that’s something they accomplished a decade ago. Uber changed on-demand ground transportation but then it settled. For all of its sins, it used to be an innovative company and now it’s not. And that part at least is worth lamenting.
Since the company is living off of past innovations it’s had to improve its financials by squeezing both sides of the platform, drivers and customers, instead of growing into profitability.
DRIVERS PROTEST AT ATLANTA AIRPORT
Drivers held an hours-long protest demanding better pay. NY Post adds:
The protest was intended to send a message to the rideshare companies that drivers deserve higher wages, as drivers claim they are enough per ride.
According to the report, drivers said they received less than 50% of the fare for the ride.
“I did a ride the other day, and she said she paid $102 for a 40-minute ride. I got $25, and that’s because I had a $5 bonus!” she said, per FOX Atlanta.
AMAZON UNIONS IN LIMBO
Amazon workers won a major victory to unionize in 2022, but not much has changed. Ideastream Public Media reported:
The Amazon Labor Union’s stunning union election victory at a massive warehouse on Staten Island in the spring of 2022 led to predictions of a labor renaissance.
But that’s not how things have turned out for Amazon workers. Far from it.
Twenty-one months later, not only has the Amazon Labor Union fallen short on unionizing other warehouses, its efforts to get to a first contract at the one warehouse it did unionize have stalled.
“From Amazon’s perspective, they just pretend that we don’t exist,” says Connor Spence, an organizer with the Amazon Labor Union who worked as a packer at that Staten Island warehouse.
In a statement, Amazon said it strongly disagrees with the outcome of the March 2022 election, citing improper influence on the part of both the Amazon Labor Union and the federal labor board that oversaw the election.
“We don’t believe it represents what the majority of our team wants,” wrote Amazon spokeswoman Eileen Hards.
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