#Struggle session taxi driver drivers#
All the while, the city knew drivers would be on the hook for underwater loans. Immigrant drivers were sold lies about the equity they could accrue through owning a medallion, and they took out exorbitant and predatory loans averaging nearly half a million dollars. City agencies, in cahoots with banks and hedge funds, artificially inflated the value of medallions to $1.3 million at the apex of one of the largest speculative bubbles since the housing crisis of 2007, according to a 2019 investigation by the New York Times. But then, capitalist vultures began wheedling down and got a taste of the easy profits that could flow from exploiting these workers. For decades, medallion driver-owners could make a decent living in a regulated industry overseen by the city Taxi and Limousine Commission.Īnd, provided they could raise the funds for a down payment to purchase a medallion, there was little barrier to entry and high earning potential, especially for immigrants seeking better lives for their families and good working conditions in a foreign land. As the great writer and Real News Network contributor Luis Feliz Leon writes in a recent piece for The Baffler, “New York created the first tin-colored plates bolted to the hoods of Yellow Cabs in 1937 as a way to regulate the unlicensed taxis crowding its streets. That debt is largely the result of the artificially inflated cost of taxi medallions, which are the city-issued permits drivers are required to have to own a cab and pick up street hails in the city. But the infiltration of these services into cities like New York has essentially been a nuclear torpedo directed at taxi workers and their industry, Undercutting rates, and creating a perpetual race to the bottom for everyone.īut on top of that, taxi drivers in New York City, many of whom are immigrants and people of color who are trying to make a decent, dignified living like the taxi industry used to provide for its workers, have also found themselves crushed under the weight of massive debt. As we all know, app-based ride share driving services like Uber and Lyft were always presented to us as a low-cost option for transportation for customers, and an easy option for ‘independent contractors’ to get some extra cash. 20, a group of taxi drivers in New York City with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance are going on a hunger strike to demand that the city enact lifesaving debt relief to workers who have been taken advantage of and squeezed to the breaking point. I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s great to have y’all with us. Maximillian Alvarez: Welcome, everyone, to The Real News Network. Pre-production/Studio/Post-production: Dwayne Gladden Mouhamadou Aliyu is a longtime taxi owner-driver in New York City and a member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance Bhairavi Desai is the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. In this urgent interview, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Mouhamadou Aliyu and Bhairavi Desai about the dire situation taxi drivers are facing and their life-or-death struggle to get City Hall to take action. This debt stems from the artificially inflated cost of taxi medallions, the city-issued permits drivers are required to have to own a cab and pick up street hails in the city.
On top of that, taxi drivers in New York City, many of whom are immigrants and people of color, have found themselves crushed under the weight of massive debt and are facing financial ruin.
The infiltration of app-based rideshare services like Uber and Lyft has been disastrous for taxi workers and their industry, undercutting rates and creating a perpetual race to the bottom for everyone. 20, a group of taxi drivers in New York City with the New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance began a hunger strike to demand that the city enact life-saving debt relief to workers who have been taken advantage of and squeezed to the breaking point.
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