At HANC’s June 2015 meeting we looked at one aspect of how the sharing economy is changing transportation: app-based ride services such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. While all three services (called transportation network companies, or TNCs, by the state) have headquarters in San Francisco, their sights are set on “disrupting” the taxi industry globally. Two panelists with detailed knowledge of the industry helped us dig into the benefits that TNCs may bring and the damage they may be causing.
Veena Dubal, an attorney and associate professor at UC Hastings, explained the parallels between the history of labor relations in San Francisco’s taxi industry and the push by TNCs to have their drivers deemed to be independent contractors. Taxi drivers actually achieved substantial employment protections through labor organizing the early 20th century. But from the 1950s onwards the taxi companies sought creative legal routes to redefine drivers as independent contractors, which increased the companies’ profitability. In San Francisco this change really took hold in the 1970s, after which there was essentially a two-tier system, with a small number of medallion holders each affiliated with a taxi company renting their cabs to a pool of contract drivers who had few guarantees of shifts or income.
The limited supply of taxi medallions made them very valuable commodities and reduced the incentive for companies to improve service for customers or conditions for drivers. By the early 2000s, national organizing by drivers had started to achieve modest improvements in some cities, such as guaranteed hours. Ironically, San Francisco cabs actually wanted to put in place a centralized dispatch system but were barred from doing this by the city. Now that centralized dispatch has become such an attractive feature of TNC services, San Francisco has allowed taxi companies to affiliate via the Flywheel app, which lets passengers locate any taxi from a participating company.
The 38th annual Haight Ashbury Street Fair will take place this year on Sunday, June 14, from 11 am to 5:30 pm. The first Haight Ashbury Street Fair was held in 1978 when neighborhood residents, merchants, and activists, with our Supervisor, Harvey Milk, planned the celebration to recognize the economic and residential rebirth of the neighborhood in the mid-1970s.