Around one hundred rideshare drivers protested their working situations this afternoon in Los Angeles, carrying out a “take over” of an Uber Hub, earlier than joining up with a contingent of fast-food employees from McDonald’s who had been striking for the proper to unionize. The institution behind the protest, the currently minted Mobile Workers Alliance (MWA), is related to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721.
To our information, this marks the first time rideshare drivers and participants of Fight For $15—a grassroots motion agitating for honest wages amongst meal carrier workers—have taken joint motion. Besides combining bodily ranks, a procession of rideshare drivers trailed behind speedy food marchers. It disabled a McDonald’s motive force-via with the aid of constantly ordering “truthful wages” through the intercom.
“When I first began with Lyft, the whole lot was ideal. I was making about $25 an hour. But then the gadget commenced converting and that they started paying less and much less,” Linda Valdivia, an MWA organizer and -yr rideshare veteran, instructed Gizmodo on a cellphone name. “They [were] getting on our nerves trying to make us do greater rides irrespective of what the danger is.” If her story sounds familiar, it’s due to the fact drivers across the united states were making comparable lawsuits—increasingly loudly, in public, and with masses of other drivers at their backs.
Earlier this month, drivers staged mass global protests in opposition to Uber and Lyft’s enterprise practices, timed across the former’s debut at the stock market. Los Angeles, particularly, has grown to be a hotbed of unrest for gig employees, with main protests being led by grassroots companies like Rideshare Drivers United, which hopes to cap the quantity of commission these systems can extract from drivers, as well as instate the same $27.86-in step with-hour pay floor lately won in New York.
Uber declined to comment on the protest. We’ve reached out to Lyft and McDonald’s for comment and could replace it while we listen returned. MWA, for its component, is hoping for an even extra bold $30-consistent with-hour floor, of which organizers estimate approximately half could emerge as take-home pay and the other half of might visit the forms of overhead expenses Uber and Lyft burden their drivers with the aid of classifying them as contractors, such insurance, gas, and automobile wear. “That’d be perfect—to be an employee and now not a contractor,” Valdivia stated, “however proper now we’re fighting for $30 an hour. That’s all we want, as it’s something honest.
As for the selection to unite with fast meals workers, Valdivia informed the group of protesters out of doors a McDonald’s, “We each have a common mission, and that’s the grasping executives that pocket thousands and thousands and tens of millions, however, pay their people little or no.” She believes maximum Uber and Lyft drivers are earning under minimal wage at the gift. Notably, the minimum wage in LA county will boom to $14.25 in just over a month and a flat $15 a 12 months after that. They shut the doors. They went inside and closed the doorways and the home windows and the whole lot,” Valdivia advised Gizmodo after the takeover of the Uber Hub. “But we didn’t prevent there. We made positive our voice may be heard.”
