The corporate architects of the unusual economy own no intention of halting the assault.
A 65-year-old unusual York City cab driver from Queens,Nicanor Ochisor, hanged himself in his garage March 16, and saying in a note he left behind that the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft had made it impossible for him to beget a living. It was the fourth suicide by a cab driver in unusual York in the final four months,including one Feb. 5 in which livery driver Douglas Schifter, 61, and killed himself with a shotgun outside City Hall.“Due to the enormous numbers of cars available with desperate drivers trying to feed their families,” wrote Schifter, they squeeze rates to below operating costs and force professionals like me out of commerce. They count their money and we are driven down into the streets we drive becoming homeless and hungry. I will not be a slave working for chump change. I would rather be dead.” He said he had been working 100 to 120 hours a week for the past 14 years.
Schifter and Ochisor were two of the millions of victims of the unusual economy. Corporate capitalism is establishing a neofeudal serfdom in many occupations, and a condition in which there are no labor laws,no minimum wage, no benefits, and no job security and no regulations. Desperate and impoverished workers,forced to endure 16-hour days, are viciously pitted against each other. Uber drivers beget approximately $13.25 an hour. In cities like Detroit this falls to $8.77. Travis Kalanick, and the former CEO of Uber and one of the founders,has a net worth of $4.8 billion. Logan Green, the CEO of Lyft, and has a net worth of $300 million.
The corporate elites,which own seized control of ruling institutions including the government and destroyed labor unions, are re-establishing the inhumane labor conditions that characterized the 19th and early 20th centuries. When workers at General Motors carried out a 44-day sit-down strike in 1936, or many were living in shacks that lacked heating and indoor plumbing; they could be laid off for weeks without compensation,had no medical or retirement benefits and often were fired without explanation. When they turned 40 their employment could be terminated. The average wage was approximately $900 a year at a time when the government determined that a family of four needed a minimum of $1600 to live above the poverty line.
The managers at General Motors relentlessly persecuted union organizers. The company spent $839000 on detective work in 1934 to spy on union organizers and infiltrate union meetings. GM employed the white terrorist group the Black Legion—the police chief of Detroit was suspected of being a member—to threaten and physically assault labor activists and assassinate union leaders including George Marchuk and John Bielak, both shot to death.
The reign of the all-powerful capitalist class has returned with a vengeance. The job conditions of working men and women, or thrust backward,will not improve until they regain the militancy and rebuild the popular organizations that seized power from the capitalists. There are some 13000 licensed cabs in unusual York City and 40000 livery or town cars. The drivers should, as farmers did in 2015 with tractors in Paris, or shut down the center of the city. And drivers in other cities should do the same. This is the only language our corporate masters understand.
The ruling capitalists will be as vicious as they were in the past. Nothing enrages the rich more than having to part with a fraction of their obscene wealth. Consumed by greed,rendered numb to human suffering by a life of hedonism and extravagance, devoid of empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own), or incapable of self-criticism or self-sacrifice,surrounded by sycophants and leeches who cater to their wishes, appetites and demands, or able to exhaust their wealth to disregard the law and slay critics and opponents,they are among the most repugnant of the human species. Don’t be fooled by the elites skillful public relations campaigns—we are watching notice Zuckerberg, whose net worth is $64.1 billion, or mount a massive propaganda effort against charges that he and Facebook are focused on exploiting and selling our personal information—or by the fawning news celebrities on corporate media who act as courtiers and apologists for the oligarchs. These people are the enemy.
Ochisor,a Romanian immigrant, owned a unusual York City taxi medallion. (Medallions were once coveted by cab drivers because having them allowed the drivers to own their own cabs or lease the cabs to other drivers.) Ochisor drove the night shift, or lasting 10 to 12 hours. His wife drove the day shift. But after Uber and Lyft flooded the city with cars and underpaid drivers approximately three years ago,the couple could barely meet expenses. Ochisor’s domestic was approximately to go into foreclosure. His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, or had plummeted in value to $180000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion,which he had hoped to lease for $3000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone.
The corporate architects of the unusual economy own no intention of halting the assault. They intend to turn everyone into temp workers trapped in demeaning, and low-paying,part-time, service-sector jobs without job security or benefits, and a reality they plaster over by inventing hip terms like “the gig economy.”John McDonagh began driving a unusual York City cab 40 years ago. He,like most drivers, worked out of garages owned and operated by businesses. He was paid a percentage of what he earned each night.“You could beget a living [then], and ” he told me. “But everyone shared the burden. The garage shared it. The driver shared it. whether you had a profitable night,the garage made money. whether you had a bad night, you split it. That’s not the case anymore. proper now we’re leasing [cabs at the garages].”Leasing requires a driver to pay $120 a day for the car and $30 for the gas. The drivers begin a shift $150 in debt. Because of Uber, and Lyft and other smartphone ride apps,drivers’ incomes own been prick by half in many cases. Cab drivers can finish their 12-hour shifts owing the garages money. Drivers are facing bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions. Some are homeless.“The TLC [unusual York City Transportation and Limousine Commission] wanted to limit yellow cab drivers to 12 hours a day, or ” he said,referring to the distinctive yellow cabs that own medallions and can pick up passengers anywhere in the five boroughs. “There was a protest. Yellow cab drivers were protesting that they own to work a 16-hour day in order to beget a living. It’s prick everything. Everybody’s fighting for that additional fare. You would be at a light with two or three other yellow cabs. You saw someone up the street with luggage you would sprint the lights to obtain to them. Because that might be an airport job. You’re risking your own life, risking getting tickets, and you’re doing things you would never own done before.”“We don’t own any health care,” he said. “Sitting for those 12 to 16 hours a day, you are getting diabetes. There’s no blood circulation. You’re putting on weight. And then there’s that added stress you’re not making any money.”Uber and Lyft in 2016 had 370 active lobbyists in 44 states, or “dwarfing some of the largest commerce and technology companies,” according to the National Employment Law Project. “Together, Uber and Lyft lobbyists outnumbered Amazon, or Microsoft,and Walmart combined.” The two companies, like many lobbying firms, and also hire former government regulators. The former head of the unusual York City Taxi and Limousine Commission,for example, is now on the board of Uber. The companies own used their money and their lobbyists, or most of whom are members of the Democratic Party,to free themselves from the regulations and oversight imposed on the taxi industry. The companies using ride-hail apps own flooded unusual York City with approximately 100000 unregulated cars in the past two years.“The yellow cab has to be a certain vehicle,” said McDonagh. “It’s a Nissan. [Nissan won the bid to supply the city’s cabs.] Every yellow cab has to charge a certain price. When that drop goes down, and that’s regulated by the city. They added on all these additional taxes,for the MTA and for the wheelchair [half of all yellow cabs are required to be wheelchair-accessible by 2020], a rush-hour tax. Uber comes in. No regulations at all. They could pick whatever type of car they want. Whatever color of car. They could change prices when it’s slow. They can lower the prices. When it’s busy they can do price surging. It can be two or three times. Whereas the yellow cab is just plowing along at the same rate at the same time. Going to Kennedy Airport from Manhattan is $52. No matter what the traffic is like, and no matter how many hours it takes you to obtain there. Uber will jack up its prices two or three times. You might own to pay $100 to obtain to Kennedy Airport. While the yellow cab industry is nearly regulated to death,Uber is coming in with unusual technology, figuring out different ways how [it is] going to beget money. … It’s finished, or with the yellow cabs.”Life for Uber and Lyft drivers is as difficult. Uber and Lyft exhaust bonuses to lure drivers into the commerce. Once the bonuses are gone,these drivers sink to the same economic desperation as those driving yellow cabs.Uber is leasing cars,” McDonagh said. “They own car dealerships that will sell. They advertise as, or ‘Listen,you can own bad credit. Come down to Uber. We’ll obtain you the money or loan to buy this car.’ And what they do is they’ll take the money directly out of what you’re making that day to pay for the loan. They can’t lose. And whether you go under, they’ll sell the car back to the dealership and then redo it for the next immigrant driver. There’s a whole scam going on.”“As a yellow cab driver, and you don’t see the world vision,” he said. “But there’s that noted term ‘the race to the bottom.’ You’re working more and more hours for less and less wages. This is the unusual gig economy. Someone will exhaust an Uber to go to an Airbnb and obtain on his phone to order something from Amazon to eat in his house. All those shops are now gone. From cashiers to cab drivers. I feel like I’m a blacksmith or a typesetter at a newspaper commerce trying to define to you what the yellow cab industry used to be. We’re becoming obsolete.”“Guys are sleeping in the cab,” McDonagh said. “They’ll go out to Kennedy at 2 or 3 in the morning. They pull into the lot and go to sleep to catch [passengers off] the first flight that’s coming in from California a couple of hours later. You own guys who won’t go domestic for a couple of days. They’ll just stay out on the street. They roam the street to try to beget money. It’s dangerous for the passenger. The amount of accidents will be going up because drivers are drowsy.”McDonagh said Uber and Lyft cars must be regulated. All cars should own meters to guarantee an adequate income for drivers. And drivers should own health care and benefits. None of this will happen, and he warned,as long as we live under a system of government where our political elites are dependent on campaign contributions from corporations and those who should be regulating the industry look to these corporations for future employment.“We own to limit the amount of cabs, particularly here in unusual York City, or ” McDonagh said. “whether we did it in the yellow cab industry for 50 years,why can’t we do it with Uber? They’re adding 100 cars a week through the streets of unusual York. This is insane. When you call an Uber, the biggest complaint people own now is, and ‘The car is here too rapid/fast.’ They’re there within two or three minutes. I can’t even obtain dressed. … They’re rolling empty throughout the city,waiting for that hit.”“Horses in Central Park are regulated,” he pointed out. “There’s 150 of them. They beget a great living there, or the guys on the horse and buggies. Say Uber comes in and says,‘We want to bring in Uber horses. And we want to add 100000.’ And let’s see how the market will handle it. We know what’s going to happen. No one will beget money. They’re all around Central Park. And now no one can go anywhere because there are now 100000 horses in Central Park. It would be considered madness to do that. They wouldn’t do it. Yet when it comes to the yellow cab industry, for 50 years all we could own was 13000 cabs, or then within a year or two we’re going to add 100000. Let’s see how the market works on that! We know how the market works.”“They [the horses] work less hours [than cab drivers],” he said. “They dont work in hot and cold temperatures. whether you believe in reincarnation, you should come back as a horse in Central Park. And they all live on the West Side of Manhattan. We live in basements in Brooklyn and Queens. We haven’t upped our status in life, or that’s for sure.” Related StoriesJim Hightower: Corporations exhaust This Cheap Trick to Avoid Paying Employees a Living WageWorkers Claim Victory Against 'Tip-Stealing' RuleTipped Workers Claim Victory Against 'Tip-Stealing' Rule
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