When a significant proportion of taxicab drivers in New York City are South Asians, and the industry is facing its greatest challenge in decades from upstart new-technology taxi companies, organizers are making an impassioned plea to the community to take up their cause. They also blame the city’s elected officials including the Mayor, of caving in to behemoths like Uber, a company valued at around $50 billion, whose ever-expanding taxi workforce is pulverizing New York’s signature yellow-cab industry.
South Asians make up sixty percent of the taxicab industry in the city according to Bhairavi Desai, founder and executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, and Vice President at AFL-CIO. There are around 20,000 yellow and ‘green’ taxis plying in the city, Crain’s New York Business estimates. An equal number of Uber black taxis also ply the same streets as of September.
The NYTWA has a membership of around 18,000, of which 10,000 is of South Asian origin. Today, many members are struggling to make a livelihood, Desai says — falling into debt with yellow-cab medallions dramatically losing value, lenders rethinking lending, credit unions being shut down for allegedly following unstable lending policies, to the day-to-day struggle of keeping up monthly insurance payments, and attendant expenses of a regulated industry.
Some NYTWA members have jumped ship taking to driving Uber taxis part-time, yet remaining within the NYTWA fold; others have left altogether. According to Desai “Ubernomics is predicated on part-timization.”
“Delete TNC apps and join our public actions, our picket lines, calling for rules to protect our profession,” Desai urged the South Asian community during an interview with Desi Talk. The acronym TNC stands for Transportation Network Company whose app, the basis for the dispatching model deployed by Uber to built its empire worldwide, is becoming ubiquitous among drivers and riders hailing non-commercial drivers with private cars to take them places.
According to a Sept. 21 Crain’s New York Business report, medallions that used to cost $1.3 million now go for around $715,000, and drivers are ‘defecting’ to Uber ‘in droves’ attracted by flexible hours and start-up bonuses etc. Daily yellow-cab trips reduced by 25,000 or 5 percent between 2013 and 2014, it said and total fare revenues dived by $200,000 a day.
Meanwhile, Uber’s market share is leaping every week to new highs, increasing by 25,000 new users every week, Crain’s reported. “And the company is running hot after successfully repelling Mayor Bill de Blasio’s attempt to impose a temporary cap on its growth to study its effects on traffic congestion,” Crain’s noted.
“You are talking about fathers and mothers who depend on this profession to raise their children and have a future. Can you imagine the level of anxiety, fear, and anger? Anger, because they know all this is being orchestrated by a $50 billion corporation,” Desai said. This daily battle, she says, “Is the biggest threat to driver livelihoods we’ve seen in decades,” and she sees it as a “vicious race to th bottom” for all professional drivers.
Facing down a veritable ‘Goliath’ she says, requires a multipronged strategy, one she is closely involved in devising – pushing for protecting full-time work; building a coalition of broad public interest to fight corporate interest, and supporting the legal challenges already underway against companies like Uber by the taxi industry, passengers, disability activists etc. Yet, she is fighting against what she says is a polished PR campaign run by none other than President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager David Plouffe, part of what she called the neo-Liberal crowd now positioned on the other side of the liberal divide, to make Uber a success.
She accuses the city’s elected officials of falling prey to that high-powered campaign. “Uber has spent $5 million in a vicious advertizing campaign,” Desai asserts. “Sadly enough, that has overwhelmed the political structure including the mayor.” She concedes however, that “The Mayor (Bill De Blasio) was the last to fall.” News reports say Uber’s PR campaign portrayed de Blasio and council members as being in the pockets of the yellow-cab industry with the major campaign donations they received.
According its Oct. 6 report, Uber says the number of ‘partner’ drivers signed for its app is double that last year, which according to Crain’s means 20,000 are now equipped with it. To its credit, New York City has laid down similar regulations for Uber drivers as exist for yellow-cabs. They must get fingerprinted and have a background check, to get their license to ply commercially.
Desai countered talk of the inexorable drive of technology in a globalized world. Instead she holds out hope that her ideas of justice will prevail. “This (battle) is long from over,” Desai said. “They (Uber et al) may have an unfair advantage, but I organize for a living. And I never bet against Justice. She always finds her way home and she will this time.”
Tough words from the 5 ft. 2 inch petite, but fiery, organizer who was born in Gujarat and came to the U.S. with her parents when she was 6. She is a graduate in women’s studies from Rutger’s University and says the taxi drivers are her inspiration. “They are my teachers, my heroes, my second family.”
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