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This Taxi of Ours


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Taxi drivers are often portrayed as the ultimate entrepreneurs, free of any fixed workplace, able to choose their own hours, and with a toehold in the American middle class. That stereotype may have been accurate in New York City decades ago, but in contemporary Los Santos, taxi drivers spend long hours in sweatshops on wheels their pay and working conditions controlled largely by company owners. Less than half of L.S. taxi drivers own their own cabs, and many of those who do have borrowed heavily to purchase them. In 2021, L.S. taxi drivers formed the Los Santos Taxi Workers Alliance (LSTWA) in order to improve working conditions, gain control over their jobs, and earn respect.

 


 

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Los Santos Taxi Worker Alliance (LSTWA)

 

The mission of the Los Santos Taxi Workers Alliance is to provide a unifying force, improve working conditions, and protect fair business practices for all Los Santos taxi industry workers. "We strive to promote a healthy taxi industry that will attract quality drivers and foster a well informed taxi population in the City. We encourage respectful discourse in our community, even with our adversaries.", said Michael Pierce, president of LSTWA.

 

Another union leader who has lent his voice to the taxi workers’ effort said that although this was not a formal organizing effort, it does bear similarities to one.

 

“They are trying to harness as much collective power and support as they can so they can move progressive change,” said Troy Muzio. “While not a formal union, they are acting like one. And we have historically supported low-wage worker movements.” Muzio said that if the Taxi Workers Alliance is successful, “that’s more power all of us have to fight back against low wages and lack of health care benefits and exploitation that happens in a city like this with the largest underground economy and the largest pool of immigrant workers.” 

 

Muzio said that if the Taxi Workers Alliance is successful, “that’s more power all of us have to fight back against low wages and lack of health care benefits and exploitation that happens in a city like this with the largest underground economy and the largest pool of immigrant workers.”

 

 

The Structure of the L.S. Taxi Industry

 

The City awarded leasings to the elite and owners of companies that exercise a great deal of control over the drivers. Rudy Armone called the industry a “monster,” evoking the imagery of a hydra with nine heads, alluding to the fact that one company control almost all of L.S. cabs, largely through a structure of leasings.

 

The net income (and indirectly, working hours) of both owner-operators and lease drivers depends on the fees the companies set as well as on the price of fuel – neither of which the drivers are in a position to control. In many contexts, there is little difference in the circumstances of the drivers who own and operate their taxicabs and drivers who lease cabs from others, typically for a 12-hour shift. The median driver is a 47-year-old man who is a legal immigrant and a father of school age children, who works 72 hours per week, sometimes putting in 18 to 20 hour days.

 

Most drivers have no health insurance and if their children are insured, it is often only because they are poor enough to qualify for state and federal health insurance. In addition, driving a cab involves serious occupational health and safety hazards. “Taxi drivers’ limp” is a condition caused by long hours behind the wheel using only the right leg. Back problems are extremely common. All this is compounded by L.S.’s well-known air pollution and its unusually hazardous roads and freeways. Some drivers experience ethnic discrimination, harassment from the Los Santos Police Department (LSPD), and company retaliation for organizing.

 

LSTWA’s recent campaigns have benefited owners as well as lessees, but there are tensions between the two groups. While lease drivers may have lease rates cover access to the company’s dispatch system that handles requests for taxi cabs. This is the lifeline for drivers’ access to fares hopes of becoming owner-drivers in the future, in the short run they may not be willing to sacrifice time – which is money - to attend a meeting in search of possible long term gains. Many drivers we interviewed recall entering the taxi industry because of easy requirements, quick access to cash, and on what they thought of as a temporary basis -- only to find themselves still driving years later. In contrast to lessees, owner-drivers have a longer term commitment to the occupation.

 

 

Edited by Gabagool
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