Uber drivers fight back

I could hear the car horns blaring as soon as I turned into the airport parking lot.

Hundreds of Uber and taxi vehicles idled outside Terminal 4 of Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport on 20 September, with a group of a few dozen striking Uber drivers at the rank exit, waving down other drivers to recruit them to their strike. A few of them tussle with airport security, while others explain to other drivers the importance of the strike, sometimes in heated exchanges.

You wouldn’t know it based on the near-total media blackout they’ve been subject to, but these workers have spent the last four weeks going head-to-head with the biggest rideshare company in the world. Uber raked in US$1.1 billion in profits last year, and according to a technology industry source quoted in the Australian Financial Review, the Australian market is the “crown jewel” for the global gig economy company.

So how does this billion-dollar behemoth treat the drivers whose gruelling and often unsafe work is the source of all their wealth? You get a sense of it by talking to Zahir (not his real name), one of the organisers of the strike, who has been driving for Uber for nearly 10 years. He told me that earlier this year drivers found out through an email from the company and reports in the media that Uber would be reducing fares for customers by up to 5 percent.

Uber says this is because demand has dropped as a result of the cost-of-living crisis, but drivers at the picket claimed that the company’s real concern is with lowering the bar before it has to negotiate minimum standards for the industry as part of Labor’s 2023 Closing Loopholes Act.

All of this was done with zero consultation with the drivers, who Zahir reports were kept in the dark on what the changes would mean for them. Then the payment reductions hit. At the start of this month, Zahir reports that trips that used to earn him $50 dropped to around $35. Clearly more than the 5 percent Uber had knocked off the fare price.

Drivers already struggling with the high cost of living are now being crushed by 20-30 percent pay cuts, as others on the picket confirm. Zahir describes it as “trying to strangulate us when we’re already hardly breathing”.

To make matters worse, Zahir also said that the reduced or “grandfathered” cut that Uber takes from him and other experienced drivers, 22 percent instead of 27.5 percent, had been revoked, with Uber now taking the same giant 27.5 percent cut from everyone. Some reward for their years of service.

“Uber is a multimillion-dollar company,” Zahir says. “They are operating in so many countries. Surely they can provide that discount [to passengers]—but not off the driver’s backs.”

These changes build on Uber’s carefully designed and deeply unjust relationship with their workers. From its inception, Uber has operated on the premise that its “driver partners” are independent contractors, not actual employees. This allows the company to dodge whatever limited protections workers are usually afforded by industrial relations laws.

The result, Zahir explains, is that “Uber provides drivers with nothing. The car, petrol, insurance and maintenance all have to come from the driver’s pocket.” When asked if Uber offers any cover for drivers in case of injury or otherwise, Zahir told me that the company provides none. “They have insurance to cover their own ass but that’s about it” he says.

The recent pay cuts have pushed drivers over the edge. Now, they’re fighting back. Their demands include weekend and holiday rates, and that Uber reduce its commission from 27.5 percent to 15 percent.

The determination and solidarity among workers collectively fighting for their rights is always a sight to behold, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picket as inspiring as the one organised by these drivers. To say the odds are stacked against them is an understatement. Uber has a long track record, documented by The Guardian’s Uber files investigation, of using its obscene wealth and political muscle to flaunt laws and punish opponents. Airport management wants the striking drivers gone and regularly sends security to monitor and harass them. The media have given them barely a mention. The Labor government has kept silent about Uber’s dirty tactics despite the move undermining the small pay rises resulting from their Closing Loopholes Act.

The drivers are also fighting against the atomisation that results from Uber’s “driver partner” system. Zahir explained how this is often reflected in drivers’ behaviour towards each other, which he said can be competitive and even aggressive.

Staring down this mountain of obstacles at Tullamarine is maybe a few dozen drivers, slightly damp from the rain. In their arsenal is one banner, a small table with tea, a box of samosas and custom shirts with messages like “drivers protest for better pay”. All of it paid from their own pockets.

But they will not go down easily. As the rain comes down a bit harder, they continue talking to drivers. One picks up a megaphone and gives a short and impassioned speech about their right to protest.

“We started on our own. We’re still on our own,” Zahir tells me. “But I am a member of the Transport Workers Union and we are requesting that other drivers join too.” The TWU is the largest union covering ride-share drivers, but it has so far not supported the strike.

What the drivers lack in funds and institutional backing they make up for in determination and a strategy to expand their ranks. The picket stops cars exiting the ride-share rank and two or three strikers explain to drivers why they should join them, with a QR code to their WhatsApp chat.

Another driver says that on their first strike day four weeks ago, he noticed that among the drivers participating “unity has increased”. This growing solidarity in a normally atomised industry is evident in my chat with Joseph, a taxi driver. The taxi drivers are traditionally hostile to the ride-share drivers, whose lower fares deprive them of customers. I ask him if he supports the strikers. He says he does. “Would you work for $10 an hour?” he asks. “Sometimes we wait 45 minutes to an hour just to pick up a rider. It’s like modern slavery.”

The burgeoning unity and determination of the drivers is an example of how workers can overcome all sorts of divisions and challenges in their collective struggle for dignity on the job. And it’s not just Uber that are getting away with punishing workers while raking in billions. Big business has made record-breaking profits in the last few years while workers’ wages have lagged well behind inflation. The fight that these Uber drivers are waging is one that we all have a stake in.

Come to the Terminal 2 ride-share rank at Melbourne Airport at 3pm on Thursday 26 September to show your solidarity.