NYC Taxi Union Calls for Law to Stop Unfair Firings, as Uber Pours Money Into Council Races
Uber and Lyft drivers in NYC are fighting for passage of Intro. 276—a pending bill that would protect them from unjust “deactivations.” Photos courtesy of NYTWA
By Steve Wishnia
Uber and Lyft drivers rallied outside the gates of City Hall June 18, calling on the City Council to pass a bill that would prohibit app-based cab companies from “deactivating” them—cutting off their access to the app—without just cause, and set up a city-run procedure for them to defend themselves before they get sacked.
“We have to move this bill forward,” says Bhairavi Desai, head of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA). According to the union, drivers often don’t learn they’ve been fired until they try to log into the app, and they can be axed even if the passenger who complained assaulted them.
The measure, Intro 276, would “create a clear process” and “stop wrongful deactivation before it happens,” Councilmember Shekar Krishnan (D-Queens), its lead sponsor, told the rally.
Specifically, it would require Uber and Lyft to prove they had a valid cause or economic reason to deactivate drivers, and except for “egregious” violations, warn them 14 days in advance for a firing or 120 days before a layoff. It would set up a way for drivers to appeal a threatened deactivation to a panel created by the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, instead of one controlled by the companies. Drivers found to have been wrongly terminated could get reinstated with back pay, and for the first year the bill is in effect, those deactivated in the previous six years could also appeal.
The Council has not taken any action on the bill since the Transportation Committee held a hearing on it last September. It has just 13 cosponsors, including Linda Lee (D-Queens), who also spoke at the rally. If it’s not passed by the end of the year, it would have to be reintroduced next year and wait for another hearing.
Krishnan told Work-Bites that getting a hearing was the biggest hurdle to overcome, and he’ll “keep pushing it forward.”
One driver’s story
“They deactivated me for no reason,” Blerim Skoro, 54, an Albanian-born father of three who started driving for Uber in April 2016, told Work-Bites. “I’m a Diamond Driver.” Uber confers that status on drivers with near-perfect ratings from passengers and a low rate of declining or cancelling trips. Skoro says he made more than 50,000 trips without cancelling one.
On the night of Feb. 21, he picked up a group of four passengers in the Woodside-Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. He describes them as “intoxicated.” When one asked to be dropped off at a different location, he explained that he wasn’t allowed do that, because company rules prohibit drivers from changing the destination on shared trips. The passenger has to go into the app to do that.
Driver Power: NYC Council Members Linda Lee (l) and Shekar Krishnan (r) rally with Uber and Lyft drivers outside the gates of City Hall this week.
When he dropped them off, he says, one got out of the car and told him, “I’m going to complain to Uber. You’re going to lose your job.”
Skoro says his dashboard camera recorded one of the passengers saying something similar in the cab. But when he appealed his deactivation and sent the footage to Uber and the Machinists union-affiliated Independent Drivers Guild (IDG)—the organization that represents drivers in the company’s appeal process and it partially funded by Uber—they did not review it.
Skoro says an IDG worker told him he’d been deactivated because he’d been involved in drivers’ protests.
He now drives for Lyft.
Opposition
Uber lobbyist Josh Gold, in his Council testimony last year, said Intro. 276 had good intentions but would impose excessive regulations. He argued for major reductions in its scope: covering only deactivations of 30 days or longer; not allowing retroactive appeals, and shortening the notice period to three days, because “allowing drivers who have violated Uber’s Platform Access Agreement or Community Guidelines to remain on the platform during a notice period may jeopardize the safety of other users.” He objected to having the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), which handles wage-theft complaints, run the appeals process instead of the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), which he said knew the industry better.
Gold also said that the law should allow deactivation for off-the-job conduct that “relates to the driver’s fitness to provide services on the platform,” and that “egregious misconduct,” for which drivers could be fired immediately, should be defined to include abusive language.
The Independent Drivers Guild also strongly opposes the bill. A lobbyist for the group told the Transportation Committee hearing that it would replace the grievance procedure the group negotiated with Uber “with a weaker process run by the city.” He accused NYTWA of being a group of yellow-cab medallion owners trying to salvage their failing business by forcing “desperate” Uber drivers back into leasing cabs from them.
Krishnan says that under the bill, drivers could still choose to go through the Uber-IDG appeal procedure, but the city process would enable them to contest accusations before they lose their jobs.
TLC Commissioner David Do told the Transportation Committee that the DCWP supports Intro 276, because “arbitrary or unfair deactivations are financially devastating for app-based workers, as DCWP is well familiar with in the food-delivery worker context.”
Following the money
Uber NY PAC—the company’s political-action committee—had spent almost $2.2 million on behalf of 12 City Council candidates as of June 18, according to city Campaign Finance Board (CFB) records posted online.
“I believe one of their priorities is to kill this bill,” Desai says. Earlier this month, she notes, the Council advanced an Uber-backed measure that halved the amount of insurance coverage required for app-based and yellow cabs, but the just-cause bill, “which will give drivers financial security, had been stalled.”
Driving for passage of Intro. 276: NYTWA President Bhairavi Desai (l) rallies with Uber and Lyft drivers outside City Hall this past week.
Eleven of the 12 candidates the Uber PAC is backing are Democrats, with the one Republican—Inna Vernikov of Gravesend-Brighton Beach. The largest recipient is Yanna M. Henriquez, who is running for an open seat in Corona-East Elmhurst in the June 24 primary. The Uber PAC has spent $418,700 for her, more than four times what she’s raised from contributions and public matching funds.
Second was incumbent Darlene Mealy, running against multiple opponents in her East Flatbush district, at $344,700—almost four times what she’s received for her own campaign.
The Uber PAC has also spent $252,300 for Maya Kornberg, who is challenging Intro 276 cosponsor Shahana Hanif in Carroll Gardens-Sunset Park. Ironically, it’s supporting two of the bill’s cosponsors: $197,400 for Shaun Abreu of upper Manhattan, and $118,000 for Crystal Hudson of Fort Greene-Crown Heights.
PAC money is used mainly for advertising, such as mailers and online video. They can’t be directly coordinated with the candidate’s campaign, a rule that’s often broken in practice. Earlier this month, the CFB denied Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign $757,000 in matching funds for coordinating messaging with the Fix the City PAC.
Fix the City has spent $10.5 million supporting Andrew Cuomo for mayor and $5.9 million on attack ads against his rival Zohran Mamdani. Billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg has given it $8.3 million, according to CFB records.