New York, NY: On Wednesday, June 18th, Uber and Lyft driver members of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance rallied outside City Hall calling for passage of Intro 0276.
Without legal protections, Uber and Lyft drivers have no legal protections to defend themselves, or appeal to the companies that fire them. Int 0276 would give the city’s Uber and Lyft drivers first-time rights under the law.
Uber and Lyft routinely deactivate drivers without any warning or publicly available standard, and drivers have no recourse to appeal the deactivation outside of a process controlled by the companies themselves. An Uber driver can learn the shocking news they’ve been blocked from working through a message on the App when they first go to log in.
Unlike other workforces’, Uber and Lyft drivers, when deactivated, are still left paying for costly car loans and insurance that they invested into for the job. The deactivation leaves drivers without income overnight, while their expenses are fixed. Deactivation are both more financially devastating and more common for App-dispatched drivers.
