Can You Feel a Change Coming?
A recent survey suggests that as many as 50% of gig workers have lost their income since Covid-19. Here Edan Alva reflects on losing his income and what brought us to this point.
I have been a Lyft driver for roughly five years now. I am originally from Israel and immigrated to the US nineteen years ago.
As a Lyft driver, I have no safety net. Since Lyft managed to misclassify me as a contractor rather than employee, they are somehow allowed to pay me less than minimum wage while pushing all the risks and costs onto me. Every cent I earn goes to cover immediate necessary expenses such as food, rent, health insurance, car payments, etc.
I also have to carry the burden of costs associated with my work. For example, car insurance, gas and excessive car maintenance. I am left with no ability to save, and no ability to stop working without risking losing the roof over my head. If I am ill, or have a personal emergency, there is no support system and there are no sick days.
This has been the situation long before the coronavirus crisis came upon us. In fact, in January I had the displeasure of catching a regular flu. Since I did not earn enough money to pay my rent, I had to keep working several days while experiencing the agony of its symptoms. Not having any benefits, sick days or adequate health insurance left me with an impossible choice: working sick — while endangering myself and my passengers — or losing my home.
Since the coronavirus restrictions began, gig workers like me are defined as ‘essential workers’ by the government. We are the ones who deliver food and supplies, transport people, and enable most other people to stay at home.
All these essential tasks expose us and our families to enhanced risk of infection. Yet somehow, we are left to cope with the added financial and physical costs. I found myself spending hours looking for protective products for me and my passengers. Masks and gloves were nowhere to be found. Eventually I managed to find very limited supply of disinfecting materials but had to purchase them at my own expense. I also spent much of my time applying them to my car between rides.
I cannot help thinking that there is a deep brutality within a system that uses poverty as a motive for workers to risk themselves and save costs to their employers. Our system sends hundreds of thousands of its ‘essential’ workers to face hazardous conditions with no protection, while enriching billionaires who stay at home and collect every cent of revenue from this work.
Lyft executives earn at the range of $45 million per year. I am tired of having these executives tell drivers like me — who created the revenue — that providing us with minimum wage and basic worker protections does not fit with their business model.
How do we fix the system? It comes down to leadership and to caring for others.
What is good leadership? I think we can agree that a leader should act in the best interest of the people they lead. In fact, I would say that a good leader should put the interests of their community before their own. A good leader also leads by example and does not exclude themselves from the rule of law.
The act of leading requires having knowledge and understanding of the current conditions, and of what can be improved for the community. Good leaders should have a clear vision — an end goal that would better the life of the people they serve. The ability to portray the way to accomplishing that vision is what enables them to gain the trust of the people.
Many of the problems in the contemporary age have grown due to the fact that we have come to look at CEOs and billionaire investors as leaders. As such, we have allowed them to influence the political system. Too often we gauge the success and failure of the economy through standards that matter to the wealthy, but not necessarily to the rest of us. In fact, CEOs and billionaires are focused on one thing — increasing their profits. They purposefully create a world in which the costs of production and labour are minimised, and their profits are maximised. The problem is, that this minimised cost ends up being you and me. When workers earn less than minimum wage, their whole community is put at risk. Poverty deepens and multiplies, while a few people get obscenely rich.
In the current crisis, the CEOs of the ridehail platforms that me and my colleagues work for are pushing the political system to take over responsibility for their workers. The CEOs are asking governments to foot the bill for the sick pay that, in states like California, they are legally obliged to pay. Their long search for profitability means that they are committed to misclassifying us as self-employed. If Lyft invested half of the $30 million it has spent on campaigning against AB5 (a California law that defines gig workers as employees) on ways to protect drivers — all of us could have had the protective products we need, a long time ago.
This trend of negligent disregard for workers safety, health and wellbeing is alarmingly clear across the gig industry. No gig company is even close to demonstrating that protecting its workers is a priority. The little that has been done so far, was forced by employees’ strikes and protests.
We must continue to fight back! We must put true leaders in power. Leaders who care for everyone, protect workers from predatory employers and enforce labour laws aggressively. We must fight corruption. We must show empathy to others. We must protect democracy so that the voice of the majority is heard rather than the voice of the wealth. We must let the 1% know that if the system does not work for everyone, it would not work for anyone.
I feel like we, as a society, are arriving at a crossroad. If we want to avoid a global catastrophe, we must change direction. Hopefully, we can avoid the cliff ahead of us.
The Coronavirus crisis exposes flaws, inadequacies and failures of the global economic system. Hopefully, it also presents an opportunity to make things better. And hopefully, we can elect leadership with the right priorities in mind to do it.
Edan Alva is a Lyft driver living and working in California.
Images: Robbie Warin
Edan was paid for writing this piece. We are a small voluntary project without external funding, but we believe that our contributors, who all are facing financial uncertainty, should be paid for their work. For our project to continue we are reliant on donations. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider contributing what you can to our fundraiser. All proceeds will go to paying those in vulnerable situations to tell their stories in this time of crisis.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-invisible-worker-zine-fundraiser
