San Francisco, .- Some drivers of transport services companies Uber and Lyft protested today and called for a strike for low wages that in their opinion they pay, two days before the first of them goes public in an operation multimillionaire.
The organizers of the protest had called the drivers of both companies, who are not employed by them or have a fixed salary, but earn money as self-employed and depending on the trips they make, stop circulating during the rush hour. Wednesday morning in several cities.
The cities in which a coordinated work stoppage was planned are New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as other locations in the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil.
Neither the organizers nor the companies offered data to follow the strike, but everything indicates that it was quite low, since the applications of both Uber and Lyft showed a large number of vehicles circulating during those hours in places like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
In addition, the prices per route did not vary with respect to those of a normal day, which indicates that the supply of drivers remained constant, since these fluctuate according to supply and demand.
In addition to the break, organizers called for protests at Uber headquarters in San Francisco and at iconic points in New York, Boston and Los Angeles.
In the case of San Francisco, about thirty drivers from both companies were concentrated before a huge media presence in front of Uber’s offices in the central Market Street of the city.
“I’ve been driving for Uber for three years and since then the money I’ve won has been reduced to almost half of what we’re seeing with the IPO, which suggests that this erosion is not over yet and for me it’s devastating,” explained Jeffrey. Perry, who lives in Sacramento (California) but went to San Francisco to protest.
“I drive about 50 or 60 hours a week and, even so, I have to have a second job to be able to get ahead, complaining to the company is like talking to a wall,” he added.
In New York, dozens of people gathered in front of the Wall Street bull called by the Alliance of Taxi Workers of the city, showing banners that read “Hey Uber! You can not exploit us, you can not buy us, you can not divide us , you can not stop us. “
The executive director of the organization, Bhairavi Desai, said they were going on strike today to send these companies the message that they are not “afraid to fight and face them directly”.
The union demands for New York drivers to ensure that they receive between 80 and 85% of the rate, that Lyft and Uber stop deactivating their accounts without warning or cause, and that they end the poverty faced by workers by this model of employment .
“I work between 70 and 80 hours a week and Uber still treats me as a part-time worker,” denounced one of the striking workers, Inder Parmar, in statements collected through social networks.
Parmar confessed that if he did not have the support of his family, “he would be one of the dead drivers,” in reference to the seven workers of these applications who committed suicide last year in New York.
Uber will leave this Friday at the New York Stock Exchange with an operation that aims to value at 79,000 million dollars, but with the ghost of its competitor Lyft, which came forward in March and has lost 20% of its value since its debut. (EFEUSA)
