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THE song that most commuters seemed to be singing in July was “Uber, uber, über alles”. And as someone who has been facing the challenge of a one-car, two-career household in a landscape empty of decent public transport options (don’t gimme that Gautrain rap, I like Gautrain but you try getting from Roodepoort to any Gautrain station easily and safely, wouldya?), I so understand.
Of course you love a taxi service that is accessible and cheap.
Let me add that I am appalled by the intimidation, threats and violence on the part of metered taxi drivers. No matter how scared you are that your means of making a living is slipping away before your eyes, that’s just not acceptable.
And of course if, as I hear - I’ve never used Uber - the service is clean, reliable and courteous, no wonder people prefer to use it. I have used metered taxi services on rare occasions, and the only clean and non-junker vehicle I was ever in charged me nearly R400 for a trip from the airport about 10 kilometres down the road, so I’d vote for a better and cheaper service any day.
And finally, yes, this is a free market and people should have the right to choose whatever mode of transport they wish.
But… is the Uber model perfect? It seems to ignore some realities that older models have had to fight their way through to find an acceptable balance, for example:
“Uber is facing several legal challenges to its contractor-based business model, which is squarely built on the company’s insistence that it is simply a matchmaker between riders and drivers, not a transportation service. When its drivers are independent contractors, the company is not responsible for any of the costs the drivers incur while working for them — gas, car maintenance — or employee benefits like health insurance and vacation time.” (www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/06/17/uber-drivers-are-employees-not-contractors-rules-california-labor-commission/)
Recently the California Labour Commission found that Uber’s drivers were, in fact, employees – the company is, I gather, challenging this decision.
And what about safety? Uber’s operations “… have faced issues in practically every European country […] London’s Private Hire Car Association asked transport authorities to seek an immediate suspension of Uber operations, citing public safety concerns. The minicab association says Uber has drivers operating without proper insurance.” (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-18/uber-braces-for-face-off-in-france-over-its-labor-practices)
I don’t know if this problem also holds true for South Africa, but safety is the major rationale for permits globally. Permits are usually only issued on proof of certain things, for example roadworthy certificates, insurance, and that the driver has a proper and valid licence to transport paying passengers.
These are things you can’t see when the taxi pulls up at your door. A proper permitting process (and I don’t know one way or the other how ours works in South Africa – is it doing its job?) is the consumer’s insurance.
If our current permitting system turns out NOT to be working to achieve this, then the Uber kerfuffle could be a good thing, demanding a total shake-up and revamp of how our public transport system is regulated and overseen. Transport, like food and health, is an industry where a lack of regulation can actually cost lives, after all.
Another way this might be valuable is in smoothing out somewhat the knock-on impact of the arrival of Uber. Comments have focused on, well, this is the free market, and you mustn’t be Luddites, so the old taxi industry is going to go the way of the dinosaur, tough, just accept that.
Fair enough. But as a society we have an obligation to think through the potential downsides. We have, after all, seen it happen before – think of service industries and automotive manufacturing where robots, software and other new technologies caused large and permanent job losses: a huge swathe of the 8 million or so middle-income jobs lost in Europe recently will not resurface, due to the march of technology.
Huge job losses pose a danger to all
And it’s not as though the people who lost their jobs can easily retrain – hard to go from travel agent to app-writer, right?
Huge job losses due to sudden competition may be inevitable, but they are destabilising, and pose a danger, not just to the families whose breadwinners lose out, but to all of us.
How can we offset that? One way would be for the authorities to at least level the playing fields (and it looks as though this might happen) by insisting that all players in this industry have to abide by the same rules.
This might also help to create focus within the ‘old’ industry and get bright sparks thinking about how they can leapfrog into the new technology space themselves. Or to negotiate with Uber – or the Uber competitors that are, inevitably, arriving on the scene.
I do think we, as communities, need to think our way towards better processes and plans for handling the ‘shock of the new’. After all, it’s happening faster and faster – and it could be your job next:
“…the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.” (www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/)
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.
