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Driver General Meetings!
Saturday, Nov. 5th
11:00 am (Day Shift)
250 Fifth Avenue, Suite 310
Monday Night Shift, Nov. 7th
1:00 am (Tues. morning)
25 West 43rd St, 18th Floor
All Drivers Welcome!
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Attend the TLC Public Hearing!
Do you know your rights as a Taxi Driver? Would you like them to be posted publicly ... at your Garage?
TLC to Vote on
"Driver Bill of Rights"
Thursday, Nov. 17th
10:00 am
33 Beaver St, 19th Flr
Show your support and secure our victory as the nine-member TLC Board casts its vote at the public hearing.
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New York Taxi Workers Alliance
October 2011 / No. 7
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Greetings!
On October 20th, the National Taxi Workers Alliance became the 57th National Union of AFL-CIO! Watch as President Obama Congratulates Bhairavi Desai and the NTWA for this historic charter! See part of the official ceremony with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Special coverage to come in the November issue. We will be talking about this and much more at the General Driver Meetings coming up November 5th and 7th (see sidebar). See you there! |
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Lease Overcharge Fight Against Garages and Brokers Gains Speed.
The last few weeks have seen the garages and brokers with their back to the wall as NYTWA's battle against lease overcharges has hit top gear.
Three Punches In Three Months.
In June of this year, the Mayor's office signed an agreement with NYTWA to create a Lease Cap Enforcement Unit. Can you believe it? The TLC is going to have inspectors whose only job is to enforce the lease cap. This means that TLC inspectors can go undercover into garages and brokerages to check what lease they are charging. This means that TLC inspectors can interview a driver who is being overcharged and file a complaint against a broker or a garage. This is what drivers have been demanding for a long time. The TLC is moving forward with the Enforcement Unit.
Even as the Lease Cap Enforcement Unit comes into place, the garages and brokers ran into more trouble at the September 15th TLC hearing. After a heated argument in front of all the commissioners between the brokers and NYTWA, the TLC Chairman ordered the brokers to submit sample contracts. One look at the contract should make it clear that drivers often pay over $50,000 for a $25,000 car in a two year period. Lets see how the brokers defend that - 40% interest rates!
NYTWA has also been moving forward with several complaints against garages and brokers. Over the last six months, many drivers have come forward to NYTWA with print-outs and contracts, late fee receipts and car repair documents to show how garages and brokers overcharge. Now, the TLC is getting ready to act on these complaints and send out summonses to the garages and brokers.
Why Are We Winning Now?
We are winning now because we have never stopped fighting! We are winning now because the NYTWA has never given up.
In 2001, after the economic devastation of September 11th, the garages and brokers petitioned then new Chairman Mathew Daus for a lease increase. We defeated them. Three years later, during the 2004 fare increase negotiation, NYTWA was able to stop the unchecked increase of the lease cap. Brokers wanted the $740 lease cap to go up to $940. We got the city to settle on $800.
Defeated on paper but armed with Daus on their side, the garages/brokers started their overcharges. First the fleets started charging an extra $3 sales tax on every lease. Then they said they "no longer lease by the week" and started charging all weekly drivers the daily rates.
The brokers, for their part, started raising the vehicle interest rates and adding extra costs. First they started taking the rooftop ad money that used to go to drivers. Next, they added a tax stamp (an annual medallion fee always paid by the brokers), then the GPS fees, and finally the Additional Driver Fee for every second driver on the rate card. So they make the costs unbearable for just one driver to pay off, then punish you for having a second driver to help drive the car. The so-called Additional Driver Fee is as high as $100 per driver per week now. When you add up all these extra fees, weekly garage drivers are paying as much as $900 a week compared to the $667 cap. Drivers leasing the medallion from a broker are paying as much as $90,000 in three years just for the vehicle.
NYTWA continued to fight. Eighteen months after our 2007 strikes, we won ten new rules solely to protect drivers. Now, we have won an Enforcement Unit to have the rules be properly enforced and policed.
Anti-Retaliation Rule. By this new law, if a driver files a complaint against a garage or a broker, the driver is protected from punishment. If the garage or the broker takes away the driver's car, for instance, the TLC can prosecute the garage/broker.
No Extra Charges Above Lease Cap. TLC rule clearly states: Garages cannot add "a tax, surcharge, pass-along, tip or fee of any kind" to the lease. Angry garages even sued the city in court in 2009 to stop this rule. NYTWA gave affidavits in support of the rule and the garages lost. They appealed. They lost again. We saved thousands of drivers' hard-earned income.
TLC Employees Can Now File Complaints Against Garages/Brokers. Since the TLC was first commissioned in 1971 until 2009, their rules did not allow even their own inspectors to file complaints against the wealthy taxi bosses. Imagine how many summonses the TLC wrote to drivers in those 38 years.
TLC Judges Can Order Restitution to Driver. If a driver is found guilty of overcharging a passenger, they face a TLC fine and pay money back to the rider. But, if the TLC found that a garage illegally denied a security deposit to a driver, all we could do was take the judgment to Small Claims Court. This finally changed in 2009.
Now, on November 17th, TLC Chairman David Yassky is proposing a first-ever Drivers' Bill of Rights, a long-time NYTWA demand. The rule would require a poster of drivers' rights to be posted at every garage, brokerage, and meter shop, in clear view for all drivers to see.
We have won these gains because of the drivers who had the courage to come forward and speak at public hearings, file complaints, attend meetings with elected officials and share their papers with NYTWA. All of the drivers who came forward were fighting for you.
It's now your turn to come forward and fight. Bring in or mail your receipts and contracts to the NYTWA office and move the campaign one step forward! Come to the November 17th public hearing to help us win a Drivers' Bill of Rights! This is our moment to end the overcharges once and for all! You have nothing to lose except high leases!
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Why We Support the Livery Bill. Look at the Alternatives the Garages/Brokers Want.
6,000 Free O-B Medallions
Apparently, $1 million isn't enough. With a fist full of bills, garages/brokers have been knocking on Albany's doors, promoting an "alternative bill" by Assemblyman Micah Kellner. The bill would require all 1,500 new yellow medallions to be accessible and, at the same time, call for 6,000 new outer borough medallions. The corporate medallion lobby reached the compromise with Am. Kellner over the summer, after the Assembly and Senate passed a bill for permits for outer borough street pick-ups by liveries.
Why They Want Medallions. Why We Support Permits.
If there were outer-borough medallions, livery drivers would have to pay high leases same as in the taxi industry. Leasing is the economic death of the driver, but a gold-mine for the medallion value. It's after leasing was introduced that the value started to skyrocket. In all industries, businesses have two main costs: operations and personnel. But garages/brokers pass along operations costs through the lease and, of course, because lease workers are independent contractors and not employees, they have no salaries, benefits or tax contributions to pay for us. Without the medallion lease to pay, drivers would get more of our share of the fare so we can earn a decent income and there might be money for health care and other benefits. Low-cost permits give drivers a fighting chance. Outer borough medallions would keep drivers at the mercy of the taxi bosses.
Garages/brokers argue that medallions will keep livery drivers from doing illegal pick-ups because they would be too scared to lose the medallion. What an insulting argument. 90% of the drivers don't own a medallion and we follow the rules and laws everyday. Besides, how many garages/brokers have lost medallions for charging above the lease caps? Medallions as property have high legal protection. And with their wealth, what the courts won't give them, garages/brokers buy from politicians.
Garages/brokers third argument is that permits will attract drivers away from taxis and into liveries. Well, maybe if they treated us better, they wouldn't have to worry so much. The garages/brokers only supporters have been the wealthier livery bases, companies who could compete with them at an auction.
Politicking Over Wheel-Chair Accessible Taxis
After their suited-booted lobbyists were defeated when they fought alone, the fleets/brokers needed to manufacture allies. They couldn't understand how, after 40 years of making deals with the TLC and the city, they had been left out. Once drivers rejected them, they turned to their old foe Assemblyman Kellner for rescue, as activists for wheel-chair accessible taxis are suing the TLC in federal court. The Mayor favors pre-arranged service, saying the cost for retrofitting cars to make them accessible is too high compared to demand and that hailing on a city street would be dangerous. Advocates blast back, saying hail service should be equal for all and the market and demand will grow. They also say the city and state would save millions by crediting taxis for fares instead of spending $60 per ride on the MTA's Access-A-Ride.
NYTWA continues to support accessible taxis, but not the outer-borough-medallion-bill-pretending-to-be-the-accessibility-bill. All accessible medallions should be driver-owned for better maintained cars and the tax breaks should go to drivers who purchase the vehicle - not to the brokers. |
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Taxi Tycoons Flash Ca$h to Bash Livery Bill
When you face a really tough problem and your version of reason (filled with outrageous lies and deception) fails to prevail, you throw money at it. That clearly is the thinking of taxi industry tycoons (the garages and brokers) when it comes to trying to defeat the so-called livery bill, formally known as the 5-Boro Taxi Plan.
Public documents reveal the sordid money trail. While always crying they are on the verge of bankruptcy, the medallion moguls managed to scrape up $100,000 for Governor Andrew Cuomo over the years, $30,000 of which came after the livery bill's resounding legislative victory. State Senator Michael Gianaris (Dem-Queens), whose district includes the bulk of taxi garages, received $22,000 plus - probably enough to cover a lifetime of cab rides.
Some $75,000 since 2006 in so-called campaign contributions to various recipients have been given by Ron Sherman, president of the MTBOT, the garages' lobbying group. "I've given to campaigns for over 20 years", boasted Andrew Murstein to the NY Post. He's the president of Medallion Financial, which lends money for taxi medallion purchases and controls more than $1 billion in assets. Former Governor Mario Cuomo sits on its Board of Directors. Murstein, in a statement defying all credibility, added, "I just have an interest in what's best for New York. I don't look at it in terms of the industry." Yeah, or the drivers.
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Drivers Win Right to Object to Roof Ad Content; TLC Demands Brokers Submit Contracts
While the Golden Oldies song, "Up On the Roof", is a tribute to the serenity offered by apartment house rooftops, the September 15th New York Taxi and Limousine Commission's public hearing on rooftop ads was anything but serene.
The stormy session resulted in the commission's unanimous approval of a rule granting driver vehicle owners (DOV operators) the right to reject offensive ads. So while garages and brokers were ready to figuratively hit the roof in protest, drivers were so full of joy by their victory that they were ready to raise the roof.
The new rule giving drivers control was proposed and championed by the NYTWA and TLC Chairman David Yassky.
Drivers bear the risks and expenses, so they should have control over ads, pointed out NYTWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai. At the same time, Desai noted the onerous financing charges brokers impose on driver-owned vehicles. To state it another way, the sky high rates might even make a mafia loanshark blush.
But particularly moving and apparently persuasive was the testimony of drivers. Demanding justice, rights and dignity, NYTWA Organizing Committee member Mohan Singh said that his little 7 year old granddaughter, upon seeing her father's rooftop ad for Flashdancers, exclaimed that she "wanted to dance too".
Other drivers also complained that some ads ran counter to their moral and religious values so the ads were a constant embarrassment. Driver Mohammad Cheema raised the unspoken issue of the ad money. He angrily noted he felt it was morally wrong for brokers to make money from ads while drivers don't see a penny from them.
The brokers claimed that a driver should not get rooftop ad control because it affects their liability insurance on the medallion. A flustered, fuming Ethan Gerber, attorney for the Greater New York Taxi Association, shockingly declared that DOV drivers don't pay for insurance. The claim was greeted by shouts of, "Lies! Lies! Lies!", by members of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, who virtually packed the room.
Gerber's contention was greeted with great doubt by the commission. It prompted probing questions by the panel and finally a demand to produce contracts for TLC examination. Drivers were jubilant with their victories from the day.
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Want to Read More?
Click here to download a PDF of the October issue of Shift Change in full.
Additional articles include:
NYTWA Wins Justice for Wounded Brother
Is Your Garage Suing You for Repairs?
APICHA Health Focus: HIV
A Tale of Two Garages
Bodies of Iraqi Taxi Drivers Found
Department of Transportation (DOT) Traffic Rules: References for Defense Against Bus Lane Tickets and More
Prior newspaper issues can be found on our website, under the Media section. You can also catch up on past e-Newsletters by clicking on our archive homepage. |
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In Solidarity, Bhairavi Desai
New York Taxi Workers Alliance |
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