Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union
reuters.com
reuters.com
If you're interested, next time you take a car, ask the driver what their end is - you may be surprised how little of the fare they actually take home. That share will only decrease unless they all get on one side of a table.
There's probably a big opportunity in the startup world for building businesses that have an end goal. Like a TV show that has a whole story to tell and then stops... a business that has an entire development plan which finishes and at the end you have a stable business that stops adding features, cuts development costs to maintenance, and just exists.
Like I don't need my taxi app to change, we're good, you can just be done making new stuff.
Yours is a pretty normal idea for nearly any business before 100 years ago, plus still the way all small businesses with 1 owner generally work (they call it a “Lifestyle business” today). But any public company that just said “Yeah we basically just print $400 million in profit every year, and have no plans to grow that, nor to change anything besides doing maintenance” gets the kind of treatment Southwest just did: taken over by the enshittification engineers and destroyed. Everything must have infinite growth!!
Complete looney toons over here if you think this is at all acceptable. I bet the workers would figure out a better use of the budget than the executives at this rate too.
For the companies in my areas, their apps feel kinda clunky, but are generally fully-functional, and don’t contain ads like the Uber app.
Personal agents will search every app for the lowest fare, when in the past the apps had a moat due to the economic frictions involved in sampling more than one app. Uber is also ripe for vibe coding.
Won't be much consolation to drivers as they'll get automated soon after probably.
I don't think all software companies are in imminent danger but Uber does seem particularly vulnerable.
> If someone could run and popularize an open ride platform, that quarter billion would go somewhere else, maybe to the drivers, maybe to the riders.
So if you found an equally effective management team that worked for free, you would save the customer about 1% at checkout. That is a tiny benefit, even granting the massive assumption.
Those numbers suggest a competitive environment with small profits, not an abusive monoply exploiting it's position.
There was this story I was reading yesterday, here or reddit, where a driver got $27 for a $65 (or so) ride. That is a horrible markup. The driver is not happy, but if the driver can survive for $27, we (the people) should be able to figure out how to charge $40 for the ride. Not saying it will be easy with the entrenched interests and the for-profit goal of our country, but still ... the markup seemed obscene when I read it.
Banning payday loans tends to shift borrowers to worse forms of credit.
One imagines worsening the economics of ride share jobs will do the same.
Some of these workers might find that the only gig that they can rely on is ride share for various reasons.
flexible, supplemental income.
Well it's the drivers themselves who voted to join the union, so presumably there's something they want to see changed. No need to speak for people who've already found their voice.
Not sure why you want to bring race into this, people from all backgrounds have the right to free association and deserve labor representation.
A union using their power to increase workers wages is not "reducing exploitation" they are using their bargaining power just as selfishly as corporations do.
When we talk about labor negotiations, that word should indicate theres no exploitation happening, its two parties negotiating and coming to an agreement.
So in a world where no labor negotiation is happening, is exploitation possible? If Uber drivers had no legal recourse to form a union (or no avenue to otherwise participate in genuine negotiation with their employer), would it be fair to say that they might be in an exploitative employment relationship?
> Everyone working for Uber is doing so voluntarily.
Personally I don't feel that this precludes exploitation taking place. Exploiting someone is taking advantage of their hard circumstances or lack of alternatives to unethically profit (in the usage that I'm familiar with). For example I would consider hiding fare pricing breakdowns from employees and consumers, so that you can leverage their lack of information to increase your profit share, to be 'exploitative'; particularly if you hold a virtual monopoly on the taxi market in an area. For an example outside the gig-work world I'd point to price-gouging as another type of 'voluntary' exploitation; consumers may be 'consenting' to pay extremely elevated prices, but if they have no meaningful alternative and genuinely require what is being sold then it's not really 'consent' so much as 'resignation'. IMO true consent requires genuine options, not just that you signed your name on the dotted line.
so again, unless you think all trade is exploitative, im not understanding your argument. Selling labor for money is the exact same transaction as walking into Walmart and buying a banana.
In the same comment you say that the government has to help guarantee that Walmart won't exploit you in this banana purchase transaction by outlawing price gouging and monopolization. If labor is the same type of transaction, it stands to reason that certain types of employment can be exploitative, despite the 'voluntary nature' of the transaction. Is your issue with the 'Uber exploits their contractors' framing simply based in the fact that Uber has not broken any labor laws?
Since you're having trouble following me I'll give a quick summary here. You initially said:
> if all these drivers are getting horribly exploited why are they doing it?
My point is simply that this is crap reasoning: people voluntarily participate in exploitative interactions all the time if they lack genuine alternatives.
How can you say this with straight face?
Why is there prostitution?
Why are slaves doing work for their masters?
Why are children going through our garbage in some distant country, if they hardly earn enough to eat?
So yeah, the comparisons are hyperboles, but I totally feel why they're upset and hope collective bargaining helps better their situation.
Similarly, there are Uber and Lyft drivers that don't have the economic freedom or level of education to work anywhere else.
I doubt this is true. There are much, much worse jobs. This is just their best option, and it's easier to band together and demand more and more even if it kills the host.
But consider this: if collectively all drivers would go on strike indefinitely (or at least, stop using platforms and instead hustled their rides old school). Would that mean the end for Uber and Lyft? Off course not. They'd take a few punches financially, but they'd be able to pivot, build something else. They have great engineers and money, and no one is forcing them to take such a huge cut.
Maybe drop that one from the list.
People need to eat, dude.
What makes it okay to exploit them?
I wonder if Americans would have more positive opinions on this if unions were called platforms, and were for profit companies that you can trade the shares.
When they sign up enough people they can enough information and use financial instruments to force fair market value and eat into other companies margins and share that with their subscribers.
I've begun to realize we now live in a time where there are a lot of adults who are too young to remember the bad old days. Are you one of those people? Because the taxi companies absolutely made their bed. Be careful of rose-colored glasses.
It doesn't seem to me that ride share drivers should be paid while idling or repositioning. Nor am I in favor of California forcing a minimum wage on ride share drivers. In general, I don't understand how this qualifies as "rent seeking".
I think a lot of people just don't like big tech companies. They're entitled to their opinions but I think they're wrong.
If you were at any of the city council meetings where this topic was brought up it was a circus show with people repeating 'boston is a union town' and grilling waymo execs.
The only few that should benefit are the owners. If a few workers try to benefit, they're greedy bastards who would be pounded down.
Do you have a source for any of this beyond "a corporate spokesmouth said so"?
If you're looking at a union there's a specific reason it formed, and probably a specific person in management behind that reason.
> A lose-lose for workers.
There's an ancient saying in labor: "the only thing worse than a union is no union."
Is that true?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
FWIW I tried to get AI to substantiate it and came up empty. Maybe it's not as "extraordinary" as "Obama was a reptilian alien" or whatever, but for everything else what counts as "extraordinary" depends on your prejudices, I suppose. Regardless of whether it's "extraordinary" or not, it's definitely not common knowledge and needs to be substantiated rather than asserted without evidence.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/do-us-ports-need-more...
This has been studied and the main takeaway is that automated terminals are generally not more productive than conventional ones *once you control for things like terminal layout, cargo patterns, rail/truck integration, and geography.*
A lot of the “look at Rotterdam/Singapore/Shanghai” comparisons are misleading because those are purpose-built megaterminals with entirely different infrastructure and logistics networks.
US ports have different constraints (that have nothing to do with longshoremen) that make the specific automations more common in foreign ports less effective and sometimes counter effective here.
That’s not to say there aren’t automation improvements that could be made or Longshoremen labor is currently at some perfect optimal productivity equilibrium with automation, but it’s not a simple we need automation and they are in the way stopping it scenario.
Automation can certainly reduce some labor costs and improve yard density, but the idea that US ports are uniquely inefficient because dockworkers are manually moving containers around is mostly political rhetoric, not what the actual studies by people designing and running ports say.
Some reading: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/do-us-ports-need-more...
https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24106498.pdf
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/container-...
The Port of Oakland is a purpose-built container port. The Port of San Francisco is dead as a cargo port.
The Port of San Francisco stopped being a freight port because of containerization. A new container port was built in Oakland, using dirt and rock excavated for BART construction. San Francisco lost its freight rail service, and the railroad yard became the Mission Bay development. The San Francisco Belt Railroad closed in 1992. There used to be freight trains on the Embarcadero.
Something similar happened in London. A small non-union port on the east cost of Britain became the main container port, and container ships never made it to London. Not that they'd fit in the Thames River anyway. No more London dock workers.
In container ports, "by hand" means cranes and big forklifts. "Automated" means very few people in the container areas at all.
Port of Antwerp, 2015.[1] That's real, but sped up.
It is not mentioned in "Fighting Traffic", which would be quite an oversight!
"From the first discoveries, teamsters, lashing their horses, had clogged the roads of the Oil Regions with their loads of barrels. They were more than just a physical bottleneck. Holding a monopoly position, they charged exorbitant rates; it cost more to move a barrel over a few miles of muddy road to a railway stop than to transport it by rail from western Pennsylvania all the way to New York. The teamsters’ stranglehold on transportation led to an ingenious effort to develop an alternative—transportation by pipeline."
Interestingly, the Teamsters (IBT) represents a lot of oil pipeline workers today.
https://teamster.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/6617pipeline...
Oil was solely a lighting product at this point. The Teamsters were clearly not thinking 70 years into the future to stop automobiles. But I think the "monopoly" part of the quote is somewhat germain, even if it's just opinion of the author.
> We find that the minimum pay law raised delivery pay per task, though the increases in base pay per task were partially offset by a substantial reduction in average tips, a major component of delivery pay. At the same time, the policy led to a reduction in the number of tasks completed by highly attached incumbent drivers (but not an increase in exit from delivery work), completely offsetting increased pay per task and leading to zero effect on monthly earnings. We find evidence that drivers experienced more unpaid idle time and longer distances driven between tasks, but find no evidence that drivers reduced their total time working on delivery apps and only limited evidence of switching from delivery to ride-hailing work. Using a simple model of the labor market for platform delivery drivers, we show that our evidence is consistent with free entry of drivers into the delivery market driving down the task-finding rate until expected earnings return to their pre-reform level. These findings highlight the challenges of raising pay in spot markets for tasks where there is free entry of workers.
I have no idea why people keep talking about raising pay as if they were in a video game where resources just spawn out of thin air
And we in fact have tons of Epstein files showing exactly that in play, as a side benefit of those being released.
It puts varying pressures on other elements in a dynamic system in different ratios and with second order effects that can’t be fully predicted until you “run the experiment.”
At the margin, a wage floor will prevent some percent of transactions that would have taken place if a wage floor was not in place. It's not complicated. Some people will benefit, sure, but some commerce just won't take place.
Consider a price floor on selling a used car. Suppose you had a car to sell. Would it make you feel better if there were a law that prevents you from selling your car for less than some amount? Sure maybe without the floor, your car would have sold for less than the floor amount. But would you want a price floor as a seller of a car? How about as a buyer of a car?
Chances are if your car is worth less than the floor, no one will buy your car now. The price floor doesn't magically make your car more valuable, just makes it harder to sell.
There are more variables than the graphs you get in the first two weeks of Econ 101. If you make it to the end of the semester, or even to the midterm, you'll know that the simple predictions you got on the first quiz were false.
I would agree that modest minimum wage increases are far from the worst thing the government does, compared to other government interventions.
Wages don't make up all the costs so we can't say that increasing wages increases prices by the same percentage either.
>It puts varying pressures on other elements in a dynamic system in different ratios and with second order effects that can’t be fully predicted until you “run the experiment.”
Now replace "raising a wage floor" with "tariffs". Just over a year ago Trump administration cheerleaders were making similar arguments about "dynamic system" and "second order effects" to justify tariffs, predicting that prices might even drop due to [insert handwaving about fx rates].
Really? Which ones? For the ones predicting economic calamity, they get a pass because they were didn't take into account TACO, which might be bad if you're grading it as a forecast, but hardly is a mark against them when it comes to economic analysis on the effects of a policy.
Uber saw adjusted EBITDA of $2.5 billion, up 35% year-over-year" in 4q25 (per them). Money poured in.
I have no idea why people keep talking about raising pay is a problem. Workers paid more spend more, stimulating growth at all levels. Economics 101.
But per the original study, they didn't get paid more?
It's a bit like California raising fast food minimum wages causing thousands of jobs to be lost[0].
[0] https://tfppwire.com/new-data-shows-california-lost-staggeri...
> About
> TFPP Wire helps you stay ahead with breaking news, analysis, and bold <<conservative>> insights on the economy, politics, national security, culture, and more.
It quotes California Globe:
> About Us
> California Globe is an independent, professional news website obsessively chronicling everything political throughout the state of California. We are <<pro-growth and pro-business>>, non-partisan and objective; we report what we see and hear without fear or favor.
"pro-growth and pro-business" (dogwhistle for conservative), I'm sure their reporting is super unbiased, their sources are obviously not incentivized to distort facts.
Oh, wait:
> Explained Altaf Chaus, who owns and operates three Burger King franchise restaurants in San Jose
Ah, yes, the capitalist is complaining.
> By June 2024, <<Stanford University>> found that over 10,000 fast food jobs were already lost.
> The "Stanford University" study behind that 10,000-jobs figure is an article titled "California Loses Nearly 10,000 Fast-Food Jobs After $20 Minimum Wage Signed Last Fall," written by economist Lee Ohanian and published April 24, 2024 by the <<Hoover Institution>>. The Hoover Institution is a think tank located on Stanford's campus and affiliated with the university, which is almost certainly why outlets describe it as a "Stanford University" finding. (Hoover itself notes that opinions on its site don't necessarily reflect the views of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.)
> <<Here's the catch: the article has been retracted.>> According to the notice now on the page, the author cited data reported by the Wall Street Journal and interpreted those data as being seasonally adjusted; following publication, those data were identified as not being seasonally adjusted, so the article was retracted to avoid misinformation. The seasonal-adjustment issue matters a lot here, because fast-food employment naturally fluctuates with the seasons, so unadjusted month-to-month numbers can show "losses" that are really just normal seasonal patterns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Institution
> It is widely described as <<conservative>>, although its directors have contested the idea that it is partisan.
You need a more balanced news diet.
Same effective income despite more idle time doesn't sound so bad.
Their rationale is that it should be more like hiring a contractor for your house, a platform wouldn't get a cut of the cost of your grass cutter so why should drivers be any different?
So far I haven't had any issues, although I did hear of some problems and controversies they have.
When I do take Uber and Lyft rides, I ask the drivers how much they're getting paid, and the amounts they tell me are often 30% to 60% less than what I paid, which is a bit shocking to me.
At some point, Uber and Lyft stopped being service providers that charged riders a fee for value provided. They have become market makers that squeeze as much trading profit as possible by arbitraging the prices riders are willing to pay and the rates drivers are willing to accept. I imagine they are capturing most of the value in each ride today. It's perfectly legal, but let's call what it is.
I'm not surprised about the ride-share driver union.
They were only ever this for about 30 seconds between when they were dumping investor cash to sell dollars for 75¢, and when they realized finally that no one even knew what a taxi was anymore, or how to find one. What literally every "cynic" said would happen.
The barrier of entry to get new non-union drivers for Lyft and Uber is very low. If a strike does happen I can't imagine it would be hard for them to fairly quickly get new drivers, especially with the possibility of higher fairs due to high demand while it is sorted out. I have to imagine they would be able to get drivers far faster than most other situations with strikes.
I wonder if Uber and Lyft would even try to partner with gocurb or another app to funnel riders directly to taxies.
Not saying a union is a bad thing, I just wonder in this particular case how well it is realistically going to work out. Guess we will see.
You might have people that want to drive taxis but they would still have to get used to the streets, how the app works etc. etc. which can significantly degrade service quality.
It isn't like other jobs that have resumes and (possibly) long interview processes.
From what I can find we are talking a few days without talking to anyone and you are driving. Throw in Uber and Lyft doing an advertising campaign with incentives to start driving, I don't see any reason they could not have a potential large amount of drivers fairly quickly.
Maybe it won't be at ideal hours, maybe it will still be hit or miss, but there are a lot of drivers out there. Just due to the very nature of this being gig work.
All they really need to just ignore the union's demands is to be able to sign up enough drivers to out last the members not making money. Getting used to driving the streets and everything is up to the drivers, not uber or lyft. I am just reluctant to think it will actually work and the drivers won't cave. Trying to pass laws would be a more concrete fix.
That puts the barrier to entry on the same level as grocery store workers. Granted, those too can successfully unionize; I agree that such strikes are only toothless when unemployment is high.
Seems like kind of a pilot-program nationwide TBH. The article links to another article last year about an MA ballot measure which made it possible for gig-work drivers to unionize in the first place (since independent contractors aren't covered by the NLRB at a federal level). It seems that the state labor board intends to sponsor the negotiation process, and per the ballot measure text would be responsible for figuring out what to do if negotiations broke down. Summary of the question is here, if you're interested (full text of the law is linked there): https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/elections/publications...
But when they get into the business of slowing down technology adoption to protect workers, that's when they get into the territory of giving unions a bad name. Getting together to lobby the government to make systemic changes to help displaced workers would be great, but it seems in this case they are trying to get government to just ban technology that replaces them.
I would consider the emputus more on companies to not roll out new technology in a way that harms workers.
*Impetus, but also, why? Why is it a company's role to figure out how to soft land a technological advance that might cost you your job?
There's also little benefit in discussing how "useful" this technology actually is if all the benefits are continually being captured by 1% of the population.
I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.
> I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.
Certainly not yet, but a resolution will present itself. The quality of which is to be determined of course.
(not advocating either way, simply enumerating the risk model; I am privileged that my day job is to get paid to think like a threat actor across various verticals and model accordingly)
[1] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-troops-are-in-the-us-m...
If you work with workers so that they will have a safe landing through a just transition, such that longshoreman experienced when the cargo container revolutionized shipping [3] [4], you might get worker buy in. If you say you will with no evidence you will follow through, you will not get buy in, and whatever is the downstream impact of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers becoming redundant rapidly without a safety net.
Despite hope not being a strategy, as an observer, I hope that policymakers make a choice that leads to a net favorable outcome. If they do not, that is a choice.
[1] Is long-haul trucking really facing a driver shortage? - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/11/20/is-long-haul-tr... - November 20th, 2024
[2] Impacts of Alternative Compensation Methods on Truck Driver Retention and Safety Performance - https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/TRB-CAAS-22-01 - 2024
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_(Levinson_book)
[4] Arthur Donovan (1999) Longshoremen and mechanization, Journal for Maritime Research, 1:1, 66-75, DOI: 10.1080/21533369.1999.9668300 https://doi.org/10.1080/21533369.1999.9668300
I don't think they need to burn them down, punctured tires would probably be enough.
Risk Assessment and Threat Modeling for safe autonomous driving technology - https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.02231 | https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.02231
Autonomous Vehicle Security: A Deep Dive into Threat Modeling - https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15348 | https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.15348
The future, boot, face, forever, etc.
They should just learn to code! /s
> I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.
More seriously, I agree with this, but the problems are going to extend way beyond just transportation workers.
These are problems we could theoretically find solutions for, but we're headed into it at warp speed with an already absolutely broken political system and massive levels of wealth inequality.
I find it far more likely that the solution to this all ends up being chaos and bloodshed rather than properly managed preventive policy changes.
But humanity's resources are controlled by few, and they want more exploitation, enshitification and ads, not abundant energy.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/it%27s%20about%20...
I do hope that unsupervised comes soon though. The tech is there, or at least far enough that I consider it better than my own driving. The hurdle is regulatory now.
It’s not something I’m willing to accept either socially or morally.
In my city, Zoox are already rolling out driverless taxi services, and the vehicles they are using are completely autonomous.
I don’t really blame the drivers for trying, I just think it’s probably not a viable long-term career, unfortunately.
[1] except of course if you’re Panera, coincidentally owned by a Newsom friend/donor. Good ol’ Bake-bread-on-premises exception!
Prices of food went up 1.5%, which covered half the wage increase, and the employers ate (pun intended) the other half of the cost.
Here is the study by UC Berkeley from this April
https://irle.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Effects...
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1smjx29/was_c...
In Europe, generally speaking, you have unions that are formed within the company, usually as a representative of a national one (but you can also have local ones). They get elected to represent the employees and whatever they bargain is for all employees. Maybe 1% of employees are actually part of a union.
In the US it seems that you have to be a member of a union to get what they bargain? And they companies can block the creation of a union?
Certain contracts do or do not require using a union shop, but Bacon Act makes it so that tradesmen don't necessarily have to be IBEW members to receive the same wages, but most choose Union.
----
My thought proposition, in conversation, is usually something along the lines of: why would companies spend so much money campaigning against union organizers if it didn't have a multi-billion dollar return (i.e. more).
Everyday employees usually learn about unions though leflets they provide from tim to time, with a mot more information around elections for the company representative body.
One an agreement is in place with the company (which must be above whatthe law requires) then it is binding for everyone, unionized or not.
Non-union shops will typically spend significant funds dissuading "organizing" among the employees, but there are many rules which technically prevent certain actions.
It is still commonly misunderstood that US employees cannot legally discuss their wage/compensation, when there is Federal Law which specifically allows discussion$.
In the article it mentions that this is a union of 70,000 independent contractors. I imagine that it would be very bad for Uber if they all decided not to drive simultaneously.
With collective organization, the union has a better chance to coordinate strikes and other collective action, as well as bargain for pay collectively rather than in a one to many relationship.
I personally don't care about this as long as the costs aren't passed on to me.
So what? Uber operates all over the world, losing some revenue (maybe not even profit) in one region is a loss they can eat. A Taxi company couldn't eat this kind of loss and would be forced to negotiate. Uber though? They can tough it out if it's advantageous to them.
This is the inevitable result of replacing local taxi monopolies or cartels with a multinational "tech" duopoly.
But anyway, even though Uber might lose some sales in the short term while they build up more drivers, if the union’s demands would make the rides barely profitable (or where Uber loses money) then that’s not really an actual loss.
Not to mention it’s the drivers who still pay depreciation and insurance cost of their cars whether or not they drive.
Similar to another commenter I don’t really care or have a dog in this race, I’m just commenting on the actors and what their relative advantages are.