Right now, we don't have rights. We're not employees. They have all the rights. They have the license, they send me the customers, they can decide to suspend me at any time. My license belongs to Uber. I get that license from Uber, not the city. They will take it back. It's not yours.
When I open the app and sign in, they'll send something to the phone—if you agree, click yes, if not, click no. If you say no, it closes, it's not going to activate, and you can't work anymore. You have to click yes to everything. Sometimes you don't really know what it says. But everything on there, you say yes. If you say no, you can't work. It logs you out. So whatever they put on there, just click yes—Yes, sir!No matter what.
Read MoreHaving a rating hanging over your head is like driving handcuffed. Us drivers, if we fall below a 4.6 rating we can be deactivated and removed from the system. So basically you lose your job, and you can't drive anymore. Some of these guys through Uber have purchased their own vehicles through special financing. Now, if they purchased a vehicle and they've driven for 2 years, and that vehicle starts to get some milage on it and it's depreciating, who's to say Uber won't be able to remove their ability to have more customers?
Read MoreI had a passenger who assaulted me. I reported it to Lyft, and they told me, "Oh, don't worry, we took care of it." They said they took him off the system. But sure enough, a month later, I was in Queen Anne, and he activated a Lyft ride. And guess who shows up. He didn't remember me, because he had been drunk and had a friend with him. But I remembered him. I though Lyft said they got rid of him. But it's so easy to get back on the system. There's no security for drivers. I've gotten assaulted, I've gotten vomited on. —Miguelito, Seattle Uber & Lyft driver
Read MoreI started driving after a friend of mine brought up Lyft, and I read this article. It sounded worth checking out, and it was great—I mean, until recently, it was great. It paid well. I mean, I look back a year and a half ago, if you look back on the drivers’ Facebook pages, it was all filled with like, "favorite ride of the day," and all this stuff that we love about this job, and now when you read it, it’s all fairly rancorous. You know—it’s not happy.
Read MoreI want to go back to school and do something different. I'm an activist, a human rights activist. I want to go to law school. That's what I'm intending to do.
In my home country, my home village was burned by the government because one of the commanders rebelled against the government in our city. I have an uncle, he was burned inside his house. People got killed. The whole area got burned down. People were scared. What were we to do? So we created a human rights organization. And they elected me a leader.
Read More
