Taxi Strike May Benefit Livery Companies
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A taxi driver strike planned for tomorrow and Thursday could prove to be a boon for livery cab companies, which are readying for a deluge of business around the city in the absence of yellow cabs.
“We will have all our cars out,” a manager at Marathon Limo, Rafi Shrem, said. “First we will serve our normal clients, then we will be happy to accommodate as many other clients as we can.”
A group representing about a quarter of the city’s yellow cab drivers, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, is pushing a citywide work stoppage for two days starting tomorrow morning. The group is protesting the required implementation of a package of new technology for taxis, including a global positioning system that can track the cars.
While the Taxi Workers Alliance claims a membership of about 10,000, Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said she is expecting “an overwhelming majority” of the city’s total of 44,000-plus drivers to participate in the strike.
Such an action would likely mean the city’s for-hire car services will be far busier than normal, especially if the city temporarily lifts a ban on livery cabs responding to street hails, many in the industry say.
The city lifted the ban for livery cabs during the transit strike last year, though the Bloomberg administration has yet to announce its specific plans for the threatened strike this week.
The exact number of taxi drivers who expect to strike is unclear, as the leaders of two other organizations representing companies and drivers have spoken out against the planned work stoppage.
“Like it or not, the GPS system is going to happen, so why strike? Why fight a losing cause?” the president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, Fernando Mateo, said.
Mr. Mateo, who called for the city to leave the ban on livery cab street hails in place, predicted at least 50% of the city’s yellow cab drivers would not participate in the strike.
Mayor Bloomberg yesterday said the city was not negotiating with the Taxi Workers Alliance, as the city’s insistence on the new technology is unmoving.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Virtually all of the cab drivers are complying with it — a handful of people who don’t want to have something for nothing. I’m sorry, that’s not the real world.”
