If you live in a major city, chances are your local taxi industry has been upended by Uber, or will be soon. Created in 2009 by founders who “just wanted to feel baller in San Francisco,” the app has become a ride-sharing juggernaut, waging a techno-libertarian insurgency against politicians and regulators standing in the way of its plans to dominate the global car service industry. With an estimated worth of $17 billion, the company is the darling of Silicon Valley’s cult of disruption, viewing itself not so much as a car company, but as a technology platform that will end ownership as we know it.
Increasingly, though, that techno-libertarian vision has come bumping up against the more mundane realities of running what is still essentially a taxi service. That was definitely the case in New York this week, where more than 100 irate black car drivers surrounded Uber’s headquarters in Queens to protest the company’s deceptive treatment and unfair payment policies. For the better part of the morning Monday, the drivers rallied on the corner of Jackson Avenue, shaking their fists at the black U logo, waving handmade signs, and shouting down bewildered twentysomethings that the company sent out to reason with mob.
The main beef, it seems, is Uber’s recent decision to start forcing drivers who signed up for its premium UberBlack and SUV service to receive ride requests from the lower-tier UberX and UberXL services. Previously, luxury drivers were able to opt-in to accept cheaper rides, but now Uber has effectively removed that choice. In an email last week, the company informed drivers that it would assign UberX fares to all drivers, regardless of their vehicle tier; drivers who canceled those trips risked having their accounts suspended or being kicked off the app altogether.
Uber insists that the changes are actually good for black car drivers, giving them the opportunity to pick up more rides, and theoretically at least, make more money. “What this does is increases earning potential,” said Taylor Bennett, a chestnut-haired spokesman who pulled me away from the protest to give me Uber’s spin. Over the summer, he said, the company found that black car drivers who opted to take UberX trips earned 35-to-50 percent more than those who just took luxury rides. “At the end of the day, it’s more trips and more money for our partners.”