The Taxi and Limousine Fee proposed adjustments to its minimum-pay system that it says will increase driver pay — and preserve Uber and Lyft from locking drivers out to maintain pay low.
TLC Commissioner David Do got here out swinging at a digital assembly of the company Wednesday, calling the rideshare corporations’ follow of freezing drivers out of the app “harmful, unnecessary and unacceptable.”
“We saw the [Uber and Lyft] locking out drivers in the middle of their shifts with no idea when they would be allowed to work again,” he mentioned. “We saw reports of drivers being told to drive to busier areas — even areas where surge pricing was happening — only to still be denied access [to the app].
“Imagine being told to come to work, then only being told that, ‘You cant work, but we won’t even pay you for showing up,’” he added.
Commissioner and chairperson of the New York Metropolis Taxi and Limousine Fee David Do attends a press convention on the Uber workplaces exterior of the Falchi Constructing on June 26, 2024, in Lengthy Island Metropolis, N.Y. (Picture by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photographs)
Uber and Lyft got here below hearth final yr for locking drivers out of their apps in an effort to regulate their so-called “utilization rate” — the share of the time {that a} driver is logged onto the app and carrying a paying passenger as an alternative of logged in with out a fare.
Below the TLC’s minimum-pay guidelines, drivers are at present due extra pay from the rideshare apps if the industry-wide utilization price drops beneath 53% — a determine each Uber and Lyft sought to regulate by protecting drivers from logging on to the app within the first place, usually for hours at a time.
Throughout Wednesday’s listening to, TLC officers mentioned they might be throwing out the utilization knowledge from after Could 2024, contemplating it “manipulated” by the app lockouts.
In response, the TLC mentioned it’s proposed rule adjustments would require apps to inform drivers of any lockouts 72 hours prematurely, and that any lockouts could be prohibited inside 16 hours of a driver logging on to the app.
The TLC’s minimal pay system assesses pay because of drivers for each hours labored and miles traveled.
The proposed replace consists of an 87-cent per-mile price, 10.4% larger than the present 79-cent price. It additionally proposes including a separate utilization-rate calculation to the distance-traveled system, requiring extra pay ought to distance with a passenger fall beneath 68.5% of the space an Uber or Lyft driver travels.
In all, mentioned Russell Glynn, TLC’s director of coverage analysis, a driver would see a virtually 6% pay enhance in a pattern 7.5-mile, 30-minute journey.
The brand new guidelines would additionally permit the TLC to suggest utilization-rate adjustments at any time when it felt journey knowledge supported it — fairly than yearly, as allowed below the present guidelines.
The brand new guidelines will have to be voted on by the TLC commissioners earlier than they go into impact, and will but be modified earlier than they’re delivered to a vote. Any pay enhance on account of the foundations is separate from the anticipated annual inflation adjustment scheduled for March, through which drivers are anticipated to get a 3.92% elevate.
Representatives from Lyft and Uber expressed their opposition to the plan Wednesday.
“However well-intentioned, the proposed rules reinforce a flawed approach to driver pay that pressures rideshare companies to use lockouts to maintain utilization rate,” Jerry Golden, chief coverage officer at Lyft, instructed the fee.
If the brand new guidelines went into impact, Golden mentioned, Lyft would “have to remove the equivalent of over 1,200 full-time drivers to maintain 2024 utilization rates.”
Josh Gold, a spokesman for rideshare big Uber, mentioned New York Metropolis drivers had been already properly paid.
Gold known as TLC’s proposal to make utilization-rate adjustments all year long “arbitrary and capricious,” and mentioned the company’s price system was primarily based on “miscalculations.”
“If [it’s] not corrected,” the Uber spokesman mentioned, “the courts will step in.”
Initially Printed: February 5, 2025 at 6:23 PM EST
