'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
A 65-year-old New York City cab driver from Queens, Nicanor Ochisor, hanged
himself in his garage March 16, saying in a note he left behind that the
ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft had made it impossible for him to make
a living. It was the fourth suicide by a cab driver in New York in the last
four months, including one Feb. 5 in which livery driver Douglas Schifter,
61, killed himself with a shotgun outside City Hall.
"Due to the huge 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 business. 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 new economy.
Corporate capitalism is establishing a neofeudal serfdom in numerous
occupations, a condition in which there are no labor laws, no minimum wage,
no benefits, no job security and no regulations. Desperate and impoverished
workers, forced to endure 16-hour days, are viciously pitted against each
other. Uber drivers make about $13.25 an hour. In cities like Detroit this
falls to $8.77. Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber and one of the
founders, has a net worth of $4.8 billion. Logan Green, the CEO of Lyft, has
a net worth of $300 million.
The corporate elites, which have 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, 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 about $900 a year at a time when the government determined that a family
of four needed a minimum of $1,600 to live above the poverty line.
The managers at General Motors relentlessly persecuted union organizers. The
company spent $839,000 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, thrust backward,
will not improve until they regain the militancy and rebuild the popular
organizations that seized power from the capitalists. There are some 13,000
licensed cabs in New York City and 40,000 livery or town cars. The drivers
should, as farmers did in 2015 with tractors in Paris, 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, incapable of self-criticism or
self-sacrifice, surrounded by sycophants and leeches who cater to their
wishes, appetites and demands, able to use their wealth to ignore the law
and destroy 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 Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth is $64.1 billion,
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 New 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, lasting 10 to 12 hours. His wife drove the day shift.
But after Uber and Lyft flooded the city with cars and underpaid drivers
about three years ago, the couple could barely meet expenses. Ochisor's home
was about to go into foreclosure. His medallion, once worth $1.1 million,
had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the
medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 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 new economy have no intention of halting the
assault. They intend to turn everyone into temp workers trapped in
demeaning, low-paying, part-time, service-sector jobs without job security
or benefits, a reality they plaster over by inventing hip terms like "the
gig economy."
John McDonagh began driving a New 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 make a living [then]," he told me. "But everyone shared the
burden. The garage shared it. The driver shared it. If you had a good night,
the garage made money. If you had a bad night, you split it. That's not the
case anymore. Right 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, Lyft and other
smartphone ride apps, drivers' incomes have been cut 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 [New York City Transportation and Limousine Commission] wanted to
limit yellow cab drivers to 12 hours a day," he said, referring to the
distinctive yellow cabs that have medallions and can pick up passengers
anywhere in the five boroughs. "There was a protest. Yellow cab drivers were
protesting that they have to work a 16-hour day in order to make a living.
It's cut everything. Everybody's fighting for that extra fare. You would be
at a light with two or three other yellow cabs. You saw someone up the
street with luggage you would run the lights to get to them. Because that
might be an airport job. You're risking your own life, risking getting
tickets, you're doing things you would never have done before."
"We don't have 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, "dwarfing some
of the largest business and technology companies," according to the National
Employment Law Project. "Together, Uber and Lyft lobbyists outnumbered
Amazon, Microsoft, and Walmart combined." The two companies, like many
lobbying firms, also hire former government regulators. The former head of
the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, for example, is now on the
board of Uber. The companies have used their money and their lobbyists, 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 have flooded New York City with about 100,000 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, that's regulated by the
city. They added on all these extra 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, no matter
how many hours it takes you to get there. Uber will jack up its prices two
or three times. You might have to pay $100 to get to Kennedy Airport. While
the yellow cab industry is almost regulated to death, Uber is coming in with
new technology, figuring out different ways how [it is] going to make money.
. It's finished, with the yellow cabs."
Life for Uber and Lyft drivers is as difficult. Uber and Lyft use bonuses to
lure drivers into the business. 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 have car dealerships that will
sell. They advertise as, 'Listen, you can have bad credit. Come down to
Uber. We'll get 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 if 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, you don't see the world vision," he said. "But
there's that famous term 'the race to the bottom.' You're working more and
more hours for less and less wages. This is the new gig economy. Someone
will use an Uber to go to an Airbnb and get 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
business trying to explain 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 have guys who won't go home for a couple of days.
They'll just stay out on the street. They roam the street to try to make
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 have
meters to guarantee an adequate income for drivers. And drivers should have
health care and benefits. None of this will happen, 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 have to limit the amount of cabs, particularly here in New York City,"
McDonagh said. "If 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 New York. This is insane. When you call an Uber, the biggest complaint
people have now is, 'The car is here too quick.' They're there within two or
three minutes. I can't even get 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 make a great living there, 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
100,000.' And let's see how the market will handle it. We know what's going
to happen. No one will make money. They're all around Central Park. And now
no one can go anywhere because there are now 100,000 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 have was 13,000
cabs, and then within a year or two we're going to add 100,000. 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 don't
work in hot and cold temperatures. If 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, that's for sure."
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best
selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and
ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 11 books,.
Chris Hedges