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May 1, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Uber unleashed
By Don McIntosh
Associate Editor
All that Portland cabbies asked
for was “Same city, same rules.”
But the new rules City Council
approved April 21 create what
Commissioner Nick Fish called
a “separate but unequal sys-
tem”—900 full-time taxi drivers,
stuck with sunk investments
they made under the old regula-
tory framework, will now com-
pete with a limitless supply of
lightly-regulated casual drivers
in a 120-day experiment that
opens the door to Uber and other
app-based ride services. All
signs suggest the experiment
will become permanent when
that period ends.
That spells worry for compa-
nies like Union Cab, where
owner-drivers are members of
Communications Workers of
America (CWA) Local 7901;
and for driver-owned Radio Cab
and investor-owned Broadway
Cab, which employ members of
Teamsters Local 305 in dispatch,
fueling and office support.
“Instead of adding better reg-
ulation, you are destroying exist-
ing regulation, just to meet the
clock of Uber,” Union Cab pres-
ident Kedir Wako told the City
Council at an April 14 work ses-
sion.
The new rules are the product
of a strange four-month process
that culminated in nine hours of
tense City Council hearings and
final-hour fireworks between
members of a divided City
Council. The fast-track re-write
of city taxi rules was announced
in December, after Uber
launched its smart-phone-based
ride service in defiance of Port-
land regulations, and over-
whelmed the capacity of the
City’s bungling enforcers to stop
it. The scofflaw company agreed
to halt its operation in exchange
for a promise by Mayor Charlie
Hales and Commissioner Steve
Novick to rewrite the rules and
make Uber legal by mid-April.
To work through the details,
Hales and Novick appointed a
new “innovation task force” that
lacked any taxi industry repre-
sentation—or even familiarity
with the industry. The 12-mem-
ber task force got a crash course
in taxi rules, and strained to rec-
ommend a regulatory overhaul
by the arbitrary deadline.
In its April 9 report to City
Council, the task force proposed
that the city get rid of its cap on
the number of taxis, and let
Transportation Network Compa-
nies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft
operate—charging whatever
fare they want—under a separate
set of looser regulations than the
ones taxis face. For example,
taxi companies would still have
to make 20 percent of their fleets
wheelchair accessible, but TNCs
could refer disabled passengers
to taxi companies or elsewhere.
Tucked in at the end of the re-
port was a dissenting view from
task force member Kayse Jama,
a union ally and immigrant
rights activist with the Center for
Intercultural Organizing. Jama
argued that the city should keep
its cap on fares, and should re-
quire TNC companies to accept
dispatch by phone, and require
TNC drivers to accept cash—in
order to make service available
to seniors and the poor who lack
credit cards or smart phones. But
those recommendations weren’t
heeded in the City Council ordi-
nance proposed by Novick. In-
stead, Novick’s ordinance ended
the fare limit for taxis, too.
Steve Novick, deregulator
Steve Novick ran to the left of
Jeff Merkley in a 2008 campaign
for U.S. Senate, and campaigned
Union Cab president Kedir Wako addresses City
Commissioner Steve Novick and other members of
City Council at a final hearing April 21 over new for-
hire transportation rules that will give companies
like Uber advantages over traditional taxis.
as a progressive in his 2012 race
for City Council. But it’s been a
long strange trip since Hales put
him in charge of the Portland
Bureau of Transportation in mid-
2013. Last year Novick pro-
posed a regressive tax to fund
street repairs, then abandoned it
in the face of public backlash.
Now he’s the front man for taxi
deregulation — a proposal that
for many years was advocated
by the Cascade Policy Institute,
Oregon’s right wing “free-mar-
ket” think tank.
“What we are proposing to do
is to let the normal free market
rules apply,” Novick told mem-
bers of the innovation task force
at its first meeting Jan. 14.
In trucking and aviation,
deregulation ushered in an era of
bankruptcies, mass layoffs, and
drastic wage cuts. Previous at-
tempts at municipal taxi deregu-
lation didn’t work out well ei-
ther, according to a comprehen-
sive 1996 University of Denver
study—contributing to rising
prices, traffic congestion (and
falling service standards and
driver earnings). Cities cap taxi
rates to protect the public, and
they cap the number the number
of taxis to ensure drivers can
make a living. But Novick re-
peatedly questioned why those
limits should remain, when there
aren’t similar limits on restau-
rants or big box retailers.
That’s an ironic position given
Novick’s sponsorship of a City
ordinance to divest Walmart
bonds. Uber is the Walmart of
transportation services, City
Commissioner Amanda Fritz
wrote in an April 20 op-ed in
The Oregonian. At the final
April 21 hearing Novick said he
hates Uber. Yet the ordinance he
sponsored legalizes its operation
in Portland.
“He’s not the guy I used to
know,” said CWA Local 7901
legislative chair Mark Sturbois,
who observed the task force
meetings and city council hear-
ings as the changes were dis-
cussed. “The fact is, a taxi is part
of a public transportation sys-
tem. That’s why they’re regu-
lated. They have to protect con-
sumers with safety and pricing.”
In an interview with the Labor
Press last November, Novick
spoke of ensuring protections for
workers while ending limits on
market entry. But nothing in the
final ordinance protects workers.
At hearings leading up to the
final vote, Novick’s proposed
resolution drew objections from
the taxi industry and from Fritz,
Fish, and Dan Saltzman.
Fritz wanted to know what it
means that taxis could change
prices every hour, just like Uber:
“How is somebody approaching
a taxi cab supposed to know
what the fare is? Ask every cab
in line?”
[In fact, taxi companies say
they’ll stick to their previous
rates of $2.50 a mile—listed on
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