> As it happens I read this just as I finished reading a most excellent
> book _Taxi!_ by Biju Mathew (New Press, 2005). I just posted the first
> book review to Amazon that I've ever attempted, I've pasted it in below.
[....]
> "Taxi!" tells the story of the organization in the last ten years of a
> successful labor union - though never recognized officially as such - by
> NYC cab drivers. There had been an official AFL-CIO union but its
> leadership had (in the 70s) sold out the drivers coming into the
> industry in return for pennies for oldtimers, and a dues check-off. The
> union gave in to the corrupt local Democratic politicians who helped
> taxi "brokers" legalize a "leasing" system in which drivers make a daily
> cash "lease" payment before they can start work.
>
> Under the daily "lease" system drivers as they set out each day have to
> make over $100 before they earn anything for themselves. In bad weather
> and traffic they can work 12 hour days for nothing. But supposedly they
> are "independent contractors" and so labor laws don't apply.
[...] -------------------------------------- Unfortunately, not a model for the rest of the working class to follow.
The taxi drivers were (unfairly) classed as "independent contractors", not "employees". If the law is the same as in Canada, as I suspect it is, the drivers, in booking off, were considered to be only acting in their legal capacity as "contractors" declining their option to "lease" cars from the company. If groups comprising the great majority of American workers legally classed as "employees" were to book off in similar fashion, they could be dismissed without recourse for abandoning their jobs.
The NYC drivers have evidently formed a union in the guise of a cartel to improve their conditions. More power to them. But that route is not open to other workers. Better first consult a good lawyer to ensure you and your colleagues won't be fired if you're tempted to emulate the cabbies. Oh, and go to a union, where the legal advice is free.
In Canada, and again I expect this is also the case in the US, the unions have fought successfully to have bogus "independent contractors" deemed as "employees", with the same union rights and benefits as their fellow workers performing similar jobs under similar conditions.
MG