Union warns: One week to Uber, Lyft strike at LaGuardia Airport

Elizabeth Shwe

Published Feb 19, 2023

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Passengers walking towards the App-based Car service pick up area and parking in LaGuardia Airport, Queens, New York.

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Elizabeth Shwe

Published Feb 19, 2023

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The New York Taxi Workers Alliance is planning to hold its third strike to protest of Uber blocking pay raises for drivers.

At LaGuardia Airport Sunday, New York Taxi Workers Alliance executive director Bhairavi Desai announced a one-week countdown to a strike. According to the alliance, Uber and Lyft drivers won't pick up fares at the airport from noon to midnight next Sunday, Feb. 26.

"Drivers are sick and tired of low wages, of having Uber sue to steal a raise that was meant for the drivers to help cover for the cost of gasoline and vehicle expenses," she said.

The group says it represents 21,000 yellow cab, green car, black car, livery and app-dispatched drivers.

Drivers were expecting per-minute increases of 7.8%, originally approved by the Taxi and Limousine Commission in November, and set to go into effect Dec. 19. But a judge issued a temporary restraining order after Uber sued the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

Uber characterized the proposed increases as “dramatic, unprecedented and unsupported.”

Then, last month, a Manhattan Supreme Court ruled that though drivers “deserved the boost,” the Taxi and Limousine Commission had “failed to include a single mathematical computation” explaining how it arrived at the increases. Judge Arthur Engoron encouraged the commission to give clearer reasoning, with detailed math when it next tries to increase rates.

At the time, TLC Commissioner David Do said the decision was “a technical delay, not a defeat.”

"Drivers are sounding the alarm after Uber sued to stop raises despite making record profits and a UCLA report showed that the company is taking a larger cut of passenger fares," the New York Taxi Workers Alliance wrote in an announcement of the planned strike. "At the same time, drivers are scraping by sometimes having to choose between food and fuel so they can keep working."

The Taxi and Limousine Commission is expected to hold another hearing on raising rideshare payment rates March 1.

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