Hector Castellanos has a locked-in schedule.
On weekends, he allows himself time off.
In all, after expenses, he nets about $500 per week.
Its tiring, he said, but he has a system and it works for him.
It did, that is, until a month ago, when Uber started tinkering with its app.
Now, the company has rolled back these features in an attempt to get drivers to accept more rides.
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Theyre pushing us to work more.
So, the companies are also using incentives to reel in drivers.
What theyre trying to do is avoid raising wages for the drivers who are already driving, Steinbaum said.
Thats the game that theyre playing…. That shows they have lots of monopsony power.
Monopsony means that one company controls an entire market.
With that power, the companycan dictate lower pay for labor and charge higher pricesfor its services or products.
With Uber and Lyft drivers scarce, passengers are seeingexorbitant fares and long wait times.
With demand currently outstripping supply, driver earnings are [at] historically elevated levels.
Drivers, however, say those expensive fares arent necessarily making it into their wallets.
Both Uber and Lyft drivers get paid for the distance and time spent on a ride.
Sometimes we have to drive 25 to 30 minutes for a pickup, Castellanos said.
And thats just for a five-to-10-minute ride.
Uber has acknowledged that the bonuses, stimulus, and pricey rates are probably fleeting.
Thats one of the issues Mekela Edwards worries about.
Theres no guarantee about how much money Ill earn, and that concerns me.
All of this tells you that we should be paid more.
Castellanos feels those changes.
He said that the transparency feature now seems useless since he must accept most rides.
No, he said.
This article by Dara Kerr wasoriginally published on The Markupand was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
