Uber and Lyft Drivers Strike Alongside Fast Food Workers in LA, Demand $30 Minimum Wage
Around a hundred rideshare drivers protested their running situations this afternoon in Los Angeles, undertaking a “take over” of an Uber Hub before becoming a member with a contingent of rapid food people from McDonald’s who have been fighting for the right to unionize.
At the back of the protest, the currently minted Mobile Workers Alliance (MWA) is associated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local 721. To our understanding, this marks the first time rideshare drivers and contributors of Fight For $15—a grassroots movement agitating for truthful wages amongst food provider people—have taken joint motion. Besides combining physical ranks, a procession of rideshare drivers trailed in the back of quick meals marchers. It turned off a McDonald’s driving force-thru by continuously ordering “truthful wages” via the intercom.
“When I started with Lyft, the entirety became best; I was making about $25 an hour. But then the device began changing, and they commenced paying less and less,” Linda Valdivia, an MWA organizer and year rideshare veteran, advised Gizmodo on a phone call. “They [were] getting on our nerves trying to make us do greater rides regardless of the danger.” If her story sounds familiar, it’s because drivers across the country have been making comparable proceedings—increasingly more loudly, in public, and with loads of other drivers behind.
Earlier this month, drivers staged mass worldwide protests towards Uber and Lyft’s commercial enterprise practices, timed across the former’s debut on the inventory marketplace. Los Angeles, specifically, has emerged as a hotbed of unrest for gig employees, with significant protests being led through grassroots companies like Rideshare Drivers United, which hopes to cap the amount of fee those platforms can extract from drivers, in addition to instate the identical $27.86-consistent with-hour pay ground currently won in New York.
Uber declined to comment on the protest. We’ve contacted Lyft and McDonald’s for comment and will update you when we pay attention.
MWA, for its element, is hoping for a more extraordinarily ambitious $ 30-in-keeping with-hour floor, of which organizers estimate approximately 1/2 might end up take-domestic pay. The alternative 1/2 would visit the styles of overhead charges Uber and Lyft burden their drivers with by classifying them as contractors, such as coverage, gas, and vehicle. “That’d be the perfect—to be an employee and now not a contractor,” Valdivia said, “however, right now, we’re fighting for $30 an hour. That’s all we need because it’s something fair.”
As for the selection to unite with fast meals people, Valdivia advised the group of protesters out of doors at McDonald’s, “We each have a commonplace challenge, and that’s the greedy executives that pocket tens of millions and thousands and thousands but pay their employees very little.” She believes maximum Uber and Lyft drivers earn beneath minimum wage at the gift. Notably, the minimum salary in LA County will increase to $14.25 in only over a month and a flat $15 a year after that.
“They close the doorways. They went internal and closed the doorways and the home windows and everything,” Valdivia informed Gizmodo after the takeover of the Uber Hub. “But we didn’t stop there. We made sure our voice could be heard.”
