Northwest labor press., December 19, 2014, Page 18, Image 18

By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
It’s been over two years since Port-
land City Council passed an ordi-
nance to hold taxi companies ac-
countable for how they treat drivers
and the public, and in that time, ab-
solutely nothing has happened to im-
plement it.
Ordinance 185721 was part of a
package of reforms passed after then-
mayor Sam Adams ordered a study
that found shocking conditions in the
taxi industry. Mostly-immigrant cab-
bies were working 14 hours a day, six
days a week, and netting just $6.22 an
hour on average — after paying over
$500 a week to companies like
Broadway Cab just to drive. [Radio
Cab, a driver-owned co-op, was the
one exception, where drivers earn a
decent living.] Adams — heeding an
appeal from a group of immigrant
drivers who joined Communications
Workers of America (CWA) Local
7901 — asked city taxi regulators to
craft reform proposals. City Council
passed the reforms unanimously on
Nov. 7, 2012. Among the reforms, the
City raised regulated taxi rates, in-
creased fines on unlicensed “gypsy”
cabs, outlawed kickbacks to hotel
workers for steering business, and is-
sued 50 new taxi permits to allow the
CWA drivers to form a new co-op
company, Union Cab. The City also
increased taxi industry fees to pay for
beefed up enforcement, and hired
three additional enforcement officers.
But the linchpin to the reforms col-
lected dust. That’s Ordinance 185721,
which declared companies like
Broadway would be held accountable
for performance (including customer
service, environmental impact, and
the value of the services they provide
to drivers) when it came time to re-
new its permits. City taxi regulators
never completed or published rules to
implement the ordinance.
“Not everything got done,” says
City taxi regulator Frank Dufay,
though adding that the City did re-
cently achieve another reform goal:
occupational health insurance for all
drivers.
But in July, the taxi regulation of-
fice was moved from the Mayor
Hales’ Department of Revenue to
Commissioner Steve Novick’s De-
partment of Transportation. Kathleen
Butler — the city manager who shep-
herded the pro-driver reforms — was
let go. Novick tells the Labor Press it
was because the City couldn’t offer
her a position in the new management
structure at the level she wanted. But-
ler declined to comment publicly
about the terms of her departure.
In recent decades, the one constant
of Portland’s taxi regulation is that
change has come slowly. But change
is coming now, and fast. In July, a
company called Uber began operating
illegally in Vancouver, Washington. In
November, it announced operations in
Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard and Gre-
sham — jurisdictions that don’t regu-
late taxi service.
And, on Dec. 5, it began operating
in Portland in open violation of the
City’s taxi ordinance.
PAGE 18
Moment of
decision
for the
taxi
industry
Encircled by Uber, Portland is preparing a
top-to-bottom review of taxi regulations
Uber — backed by $1.5 billion
from Goldman Sachs, Google, and a
pack of hedge funds — is at the head
of a group of Internet companies that
are fast disrupting the taxi industry.
Others include Lyft, Sidecar, Wingz,
Summon and Hailo. Uber says it’s not
a taxi company, but an Internet com-
pany, with a smartphone app that con-
nects people willing to drive (at a rate
set by Uber) with people willing to
pay that amount for a ride.
Craigslist ads running all over the
Portland metro area promise drivers
can make up to $20 hour or up to
$1,500 a week at Uber. And Uber’s
appeal to customers is increasing ride
availability, at rates competitive with
taxis. But Uber drivers in some cities
are rebelling against a whole set of
exploitative practices; as GQ maga-
zine put it: “Uber operates more like a
pimp than a boss.” In several cities,
Uber drivers have formed quasi-union
organizations affiliated with the
Teamsters, and some even waged a
strike this fall by turning off the app
— to protest arbitrary fare cuts and
the practice of blacklisting drivers
based on customer reviews that are
good but not stellar. And that’s not to
mention a succession of scandals call-
ing the company’s ethics into ques-
tion, like the Uber executive who
threatened to spy on and expose the
private details of journalists who
wrote critically about the company, or
the groups of temp workers Uber
hired to sabotage competitors by re-
cruiting drivers or scheduling and
then canceling hundreds of rides.
Uber also runs an aggressive polit-
ical operation that slams local taxi
regulations as antiquated and unnec-
essary. The company is banned in a
number of cities and countries, and
operates in other cities in violation of
the regulations.
When Uber first contacted the City
of Portland, officials seemed to give it
the cold shoulder, saying it could not
operate in Portland unless it followed
the same rules as other companies. In
fact, those rules bar Uber and other
upstarts for now, because the City
caps the number of taxi permits to
avoid the low wages and traffic con-
gestion that could come from hyper-
competition. Companies are also re-
quired to operate 24-hour telephone
dispatch, can’t refuse a call no matter
how short, and must provide handi-
capped accessible vehicles. None of
that fits with Uber’s business model.
When Uber began operating in
Portland anyway, the City filed suit to
enforce the law. But the regulations
themselves are now up in the air.
Commissioner Novick says the City
is planning a top-to-bottom review of
taxi regulations to see if there’s a way
Uber and the other companies could
operate legally, without sacrificing
consumer protection or workers’ in-
terests. No stakeholders have been
identified yet for the to-be-created
task force, but Novick said he’d like it
to get started by the middle of Janu-
ary, and aim to come up with a report
by June.
“If we could come up with a regu-
latory structure where we’re not limit-
ing the number of people who partici-
pate, but we are ensuring protections
for workers and consumers, that’s
worth looking at,” Novick said. “Then
we can tell Uber and Lyft ‘we will not
prohibit you from operating, although
you will operate by the same regula-
tions as everybody else.’”
In the meantime, existing taxi op-
erators aren’t waiting around; to re-
spond to the online operators, they’ve
signed on with the maker of a com-
peting smartphone app. Users of the
app, called Curb, can now summon a
cab in Portland with a tap of a phone
and be picked up by the nearest Radio
or Broadway cab. Like Uber’s app, it
can use the phone’s GPS to pinpoint a
location and track the driver’s arrival,
and it lets customers pay the fare and
tip within the app. Union Cab and
Green Cab are expected to join Curb
within a few weeks. Taxi companies
are also requesting several hundred
more permits to meet increased de-
mand, including Union Cab, which is
asking for 50 more.
“There’s a crying need for new
cabs out there right now,” says Dufay,
the Portland taxi regulator.
Hoping Your
Holidays
Are Filled
With Happiness
ATPA
Administrators of
Employee Benefit Plans
7600 SW Mohawk St.
Tualatin, OR 97062
503 454-3800 Fax: 503 454-3832
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
DECEMBER 19, 2014