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🪧🔐 Drivers Show Up For NYTWA Protest, Commissioner Bader Sounds Off On Uber Lockouts
Hundreds of NYC TLC drivers showed up to protest Uber driver "lockouts" in front of Uber's NYC headquarters, while TLC Board Commissioner Bader calls out Uber during public meeting
Hundreds of drivers showed up for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) protest in front of Uber’s Manhattan office
Protest was focused on Uber NYC driver “lockouts”
In separate, 10am TLC meeting yesterday, Board Commissioner Paul Bader sounded off on Uber driver lockouts and said regulator is “going to look into anyway we can, so we can alleviate this problem”
Yesterday, hundreds of TLC drivers showed up for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) protest in front of Uber’s downtown Manhattan offices. NYTWA’s protest focused on the recent rollout of Uber NYC driver “lockouts”, which limits the ability of a driver to log into the rideshare app when and where they want.
Source: Screengrab of publicly accessible NYTWA X account
TLC Board Commissioner Sounds Off & WAV Amendments Approved
Earlier in the day at 10am (protest started around 1pm), there was very short (~9 minute) TLC Board meeting (not public hearing) that focused on proposals around changing wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) requirements for both the taxi medallion sector and other NYC for-hire transport sectors. These new rules passed a TLC Board vote.
During the meeting TLC Board Commissioner Paul Bader, who interestingly communicated the TLC Board’s view not Chair David Do 🤔, shared his thoughts on Uber driver lockouts.
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Bader was visibly upset by the driver lockouts and Chair Do followed with some brief comments on “supply controls” at the conclusion of the short meeting. We share the clips of those comments below.
I want to congratulate Automarketplace for being so accurate on the last post about the NYTWA protest, i wasn’t there personally but some people i know went to protest against Uber but also TLC, according to what i was told by them NYTWA did not allowed this people to enter the protest with their banner because of what it said “Reform TLC, abolish UR” they were told they could stay but not to gather around the NYTWA group unless they put their banners aside.
About the meeting….I can honestly say they did much more talking that what i was expecting, at least Comissioner Bader did, even though for a few seconds on his speech i wasn’t sure if he was referring to “lockouts” itself or “deactivations”. Their exact words…“going to look into anyway we can, so we can alleviate this problem”, plus David Do’s “supply control” final comment, these were enough just to let the industry know they are actually working or have the initiative of working on something to “alleviate” the lockouts situation, is it going to be by fully enforcing the UR while prohibiting lockouts, by capping driver licenses and eliminating the UR or by sitting down with Uber and work on something that “works for everybody” (most likely not happening lol) is what’s still in question here…
They are probably going to bring back the planner. Which is the same but more predictable. Come on tlc remove the UR, stop this yearly drama over a minimum wage job.