Rafael Rodriguez reminds him the moment he learned that Uber and Lyft were leaving Austin. “It was Mother’s Day, and I was with my girl in a restaurant,” he says. ‘I said,’ Now I do not pay for that piña colada. ” Today he laughs about it. But in 2016, the situation was dire. Rodriguez was a full-time driver for the ride-hailing companies. Just two days later, the platforms shut down the capital of Texas, frustrated that they lost a voting measure that forced their potential drivers to fingerprint for background checks. Rodriguez was out of a job.
Now something similar could happen on a much larger scale, in California. Earlier this month, a state judge ordered the ride-hail companies to treat ride-hail drivers as employees, instead of independent contractors, early Friday. If they can not reverse or delay the ruling, Uber and Lyft say they will stop operating in California, where both companies began.
“Everything we have built is based on this platform that brings revenue and brings people who want transportation or delivery,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview with New York Magazine‘s Pivot podcast on Wednesday. “You can not leave that stuff.”
The strategy seems to be a political bet, one that has worked for the companies before. They hope that if riders and drivers are angry enough about their departure, state lawmakers will consider a law passed last year that effectively classifies drivers as employees. In 2015, Uber used fifty in-app graphics generated by callers to hit back on a car hood proposed by New York Mayor Bill De Blasio. (When the city visited again three years later, Uber called its customers about it. That attempt failed.) The company also mobilized driving in London in 2017, when city regulators threatened the app’s license over security issues. Today, despite ongoing regular fights, Uber still operates in London.
That early Friday, hundreds of thousands of drivers in California, many of them part-time, might be out for a performance. Austin drivers have some words of advice for them: Brace for chaos. And then, get creative.
The week after Uber and Lyft left Austin in the spring of 2016 was confusing, say drivers from the city. People who did not follow the news, or voted in the elections, went crazy. Others became desperate. “In the downtown bar, people went to the cars on the street, slammed the window and waited for cash,” said Christopher David, who founded an Uber competitor, Arcade City, in Austin . “There was a huge shortage of cars.”
Soon, however, replacements arrived. Arcade City started as a Facebook group linking drivers to people who needed places. (The operation has run into problems with the law for misappropriation.) Other platforms ready to follow the city’s new rules will be launched in the coming weeks and months: Fare, Fasten, Wingz, GetMe , and the non-profit RideAustin. The city eventually set up a hotline and then a job fair for drivers who had lost their jobs.
But Austin drivers who spoke with WIRED said their best rates came from opportunities they made themselves. ‘Within a few weeks or so I started to realize that it was actually better [Uber and Lyft] are not here, ”says Miguel Monsivais, who advised both companies as of 2015.“ This is our money, and it belongs to us. It belongs to the community. Today, Monsivais drives a pedicab and picks up passengers for Arcade City, which still operates in Austin. He has also introduced regular rides with repeat customers – which the ride-hail apps drivers do not allow.
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