UBER UPDATE INT
NYC CONSIDERS NEW PAY RULES FOR UBER DRIVERS
New York City regulators are moving toward significantly raising wages for drivers for Uber and other ride-hailing apps. The step wouldmake New York the firstmajor American city to establish pay rules to grapple with the upheaval caused by ride-hailing compa- nies that has decimated the yellow cab industry and left many drivers in financial ruin. The proposed rules from the Taxi and Limousine Commission were outlined in a study released recently and seek to address a problem at the heart of Uber’s businessmodel: Its rides are often less expen- sive and more comfortable than taxis, but many of its drivers are struggling to make a decent living after the company gets its cut. “Their low pay has persisted despite the rapid growth of the indus- try,” the study said. If a driver’s earnings fall below $17.22 per hour over the course of a week, the companies would be required to make up the difference partly by lowering their commissions, which range from about ten to 25 per cent of passenger fares on average. Themedian net hourly earnings inthe industry were about $14.25, the study found. The taxi commission has the power to adopt the rules without the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio or the City Council, but the mayor said he prefers to address the driver pay problem through the City Council. The New York pay rules would apply to four major car service apps - Uber, Lyft, Via and Juno - all of which provide more than 10,000 trips each day in New York. Uber said however that it had major concerns over the proposal. Alix Anfang, a spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company worried that it would hurt “riders through substantially increased prices and reduced service.” Drivers across the for-hire vehicle and taxi businesses say they are not making enough to pay their bills or support their families. Six professional drivers have killed themselves in recent months. New York City is considering a broader series of regulations for Uber, including a cap on vehicles, as debate has intensified not only over pay but about worsening traffic from the flood of for-hire cars. The city’s taxi commission hired two independent economists to study its pay proposal, which has not yet been formally introduced. Mr de Blasio’s office said the city wouldn’t “move in any direction until we review the report and themayormakes a decision” but that the mayor supported a “comprehensive package” to address the challenges facing the taxi and for-hire vehicle industry. A minimum wage of $17.22 an hour after expenses would increase driver earnings by about 22.5 per cent on average, or $6,345 per year, for those who would get increases under the proposal, accord- ing to the study by the independent economists. The proposal aims to bring pay in line with the $15 minimum wage that the state is moving toward while considering the challenges the drivers face as independent contractors. Behind the proposed hourly minimum wage is a sophisticated arrangement designed to make the entire app-based system more efficient. Its centerpiece is an incentive for the app companies to increase their so-called utilisation rates - that is, the portion of each hour in which drivers are ferrying a passenger. The authors say this incen- tive would address a key inefficiency of the current system, which is that com-
AUGUST 2018
panies such as Uber and Lyft lure toomany drivers onto the road as a way to lower wait times for passengers. This oversupply depress- es wages, since drivers can only earn money when they have a passenger in their car.
UBER DRIVER BANNED AFTER SECRETLY LIVESTREAMING FEMALE PASSENGERS
An Uber driver has been suspended after he secretly live- streamed hundreds of women passen- gers online so people could rate their looks. According to the Sun, Jason Gargac, 32, shared live broad- casts of around 700 rides in Missouri on the Amazon-owned video platform Twitch since March 2018. The majority of the clips were aired without permission from his passengers. But, shockingly, his broadcasts are legal as they take advantage of Missouri’s one-party consent laws, which essentially allows a party in a conversation (in this case, Gargac) to record it without the other person’s consent. Gargac, who drives for both Uber and rival Lyft, was suspended by both companies following an exposé on his antics by the St Louis Dispatch. The driver, known as “JustSmurf” on Twitch, had set up cameras on his dashboard and outside the car so people could see the faces of the passengers in his neon-purple-lit backseat and where they were heading. During the streams, viewers would rate the women based on attractiveness while others would disparage what they were talking about or the neighbourhoods where they lived. Sometimes the recordings would even catch full names and addresses of the passengers without Gargac ever notifying them that they were being filmed. The Uber driver often commented on his riders before they got in to his car and after he had completed the trip. He referred to the live-streams as “content”. “This better be content, I swear to God. This better be content, that’s all I’m saying,” Gargac tells viewers of two female passengers he picked up. “I mean, the blond girl looks kind of cute, if they’re together. The blonde is cute. The one who ordered is not.” Talking to the St Louis Dispatch, Gargac said that his wife would help remove any racist, homophobic or overtly sexual comments. “Saying she was an 8 out of 10 or a 9 out of 10, that’s cringe-y to a point, but I don’t think it goes over a line,” he said. “But if you go over the line of like: ‘Oh, I’d do such dirty things to her,’ something like that, I don’t want that at all.” Gargac’s Twitch channel, home to 4,350 followers, has since been completely deactivated, though Twitch told the Post-Dispatch that it was uncertain as to why the channel was no longer online. “We do not comment on Terms of Service violations in regards to specific individuals”, said Twitch in a statement, adding “we do not allow people to share content that invades others’ privacy”. The driver tweeted that he had removed videos from his Twitch channel to “calm everyone down”. Despite the fact that the practice is legal, both Uber and Lyft have now suspended Gargac from operating as a driver. “The troubling behaviour in the videos is not in line with our Com- munity Guidelines.We have ended our partnership with this driver,” an Uber spokeswoman told CNET. Lyft, too, confirmed that it had parted ways with the driver.
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