On Sept. 27, hundreds of Uber and Lyft Drivers, along the Machinists Union and their affiliate, the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG), walked out of a City Hall hearing in protest of what they are calling, “an out-of-touch, union busting New York City Council bill that would undermine the rights of the city’s 80,000 Uber and Lyft drivers to fight unfair app company treatment.” More than 200 NYC app-hail drivers joined with city labor leaders on the steps of City Hall to protest the hearing, according to the IDG.
The City Council Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure scheduled a hearing for a bill that protestors say would “undermine the union-negotiated rights of the city’s Uber & Lyft drivers to appeal unfair termination or ‘deactivation’ of their driver account through a successful driver-led appeals process.”
Protestors say the bill, Int. 276, “would replace the union process with a weaker, taxpayer-funded system run by a city agency that leaves drivers to fend for themselves. Worse yet, the city bill has a loophole that would let Uber and Lyft force drivers to ‘opt out’ of any appeals process at all.”
In 2016, the Machinists Union negotiated the nation’s first driver-led process for New York City’s app-hail drivers to appeal unfairly being kicked off the driver app or “deactivated”. That process has been successfully implemented by the IDG ever since. Under the current process, the IDG has helped thousands of deactivated drivers get back to work – many within a week. Every case that went to arbitration wase successful in returning the driver to work.
“This is a disgrace and a distraction from addressing the very major challenges for-hire vehicle workers are facing,” said Brendan Sexton, President of the IDG. “We should be talking about permanently ending the exploitative app company lockouts that Uber and Lyft deployed to avoid paying drivers the minimum, livable wage that this City Council voted into law. We should be talking about increasing the minimum pay rates to compensate the 99% of New York City rideshare drivers who were affected by Uber and Lyft’s app lockouts this summer.”
Source: Independent Drivers Guild
