this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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Canadian Labour Movements
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Do actual taxi drivers get paid a minimum wage whether or not they are driving someone? I assumed that was how it worked. Like the meter thing is so the taxi company can make money, but the driver makes a flat rate. Is that not the case?
I read a biography by a US cab driver (Dharma Road) and from that my understanding is that taxi company drivers pay the company a set amount per shift - let's say $100 - to use the cab license and get the perks of being part of a company (e.g., dispatcher, insurance perhaps). Whatever a driver makes in a day over $100 is their earnings. (All the money they collect, meter and tips, go into the total amount from which they have to pay the company $100.)
They don't get an hourly minimum wage, like other workers (e.g., food and beverage servers) who are expected to make more than an hourly minimum wage anyway.
That sounds pretty similar to the Uber arrangement. Slightly different because it's BYO car, but they tradeoff is that more people use Uber than taxis. It seems to me that bad economic conditions could easily create a situation where those taxi drivers are making starvation wages too.