Another day, another news article, and this happened very recently.
Uber driving has pretty much dominated the traditional cab or taxi work and it's a decent work if you can manage to find a good work life balance but just like most work around the globe, there's a lot of problems around it.
This past weekend, Uber drivers in Peterborough took a step which was quite a bold one, risky but very necessary.
They went on a 48 hour strike, refusing to work from Friday through Sunday morning. What's their reason you might ask? Because they are tired, as we all are. Tired of working long hours. Tired of getting paid less than what they deserve. The typical predicament of workers around the globe. Most of all, they're tired of being treated like they don’t matter.
Most workers just like these drivers are not asking for the moon to be handed to them, or be given a million dollars a month for their work, they just want fair pay and better working conditions.
Instead of that, what they get is a system that squeezes them dry. At this point, work life balance has become a luxury.
As an Uber driver, after paying for petrol, insurance, car repairs and other costs, there's a chance you're going to be earning less than minimum wage and that's what many of the drivers are complaining about.
It's getting a bit ridiculous at this point because imagine having to drive about 10 hours a day and still not making enough to live on.
From the news, one of the drivers, Mehtab Anwar, said the fares are too low now, unsustainable. This kind of work just can't go on like this. I'm not exactly surprised to hear more people complain about pay, they're right to do so because with costs rising everywhere, from food to rent to fuel, people are being pushed into a corner. I would say damn inflation, but I can't blame inflation, the people in power have set this system, it favors them so they wouldn't bother seeing this as an emergency case.
When your boss runs a billion dollar tech company that takes a big cut of your earnings and doesn't give real protections, what choice do you have than to protest and they decided we'll show you our worth by not working.
The Uber company claims drivers are guaranteed the National Living Wage and some benefits like holiday pay and a pension but we know well that, that doesn’t tell the full story.
The reality is drivers are only paid for the time they have a passenger in the car, all the time spent waiting for a ride doesn’t count. So assuming they get £10 for a trip, they might have waited 30 minutes or more for that trip to show up. You add fuel and costs and it doesn't amount to much at all.
The company also claims they are working with a union to make things better or sustainable but we just saw drivers on strike so clearly that’s not enough.
It's not just a fight to earn fair living or wages, the local councils are making it harder too for them. Your driver's licensing can be delayed and the standards set to get the license is too high. The council said they can’t lower their standards because it might lead to too many drivers and not enough work to go around.
They've ended up building a system that keep workers competing against each other instead of standing together so everyone can be ok at the end of the day.
So that's why I had to include in my title that, they're right for going on a strike. If bold actions like this are not taken, it's no different from allowing a bully to keep bullying. Somebody has to stand up to the injustice and the centralization going on.
They can't allow themselves to be treated like disposable parts of the Uber app, they're human beings and deserve real pay, real protections and at least some respect because without the drivers there's no Uber. Without workers there's no millionaire or billionaire CEO.
It seems to me that more and more gig workers everywhere are being pushed to their limit while the companies they work for rake in profits. Profits they could afford to share equally with those that make the company run.
I read the story from this website and the screenshot is from the same website
Screenshot from website, it doesn't belong to me.
