 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These words from the Declaration of Independence are familiar to many of us. And yet it took 143 years for women to get the right to vote and 189 years for black people to get the right to vote. And still today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are still only words for many people. Here in Boston, life expectancy varies by 30 years depending on where you live. In Roxbury, with many poor and black people, life expectancy is 59 years. In the back bay, wealthy and mostly white, life expectancy is 91 years. It's tough to have liberty when you are in prison. The United States incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 people. Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most countries in the world. Millions of people in our country don't have health care, a decent job, good education, a home they can afford, and that makes it pretty hard to pursue happiness. So on this show, you are going to meet people who are making it possible to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People today who are making the words of the Declaration of Independence come true. Hi. My name is Michael Jacoby Brown, and I'm your host today for We Hold These Truths. And today, we're very honored to have Henry DeGroote, one of the leaders of Mass Drivers United, which is tempting to organize drivers at UberLift and other organizations. Henry, can you tell me a little bit about what it's like to be a driver? You've done it for how long now at Uber? Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on. I've been an Uber driver for almost three years. Wow. And I also drive mostly with Uber, but also a little bit of Lyft, Amazon Flex, which is package delivery. I've done DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub. I think the only thing I haven't done is Instacart. Okay, so you've been driving for quite a while for these organizations, and I know some of them Lyft and Uber are spending a lot of money to try to stop people like you and others from being considered employees. Can you tell me what it's really like to be a driver? What's the good, the bad, and the ugly? Yeah, so being a driver does absolutely have positive sides to it. The flexibility, which the companies love to highlight in order to, when they're trying to deny us our rights, there is a real side to that. There's no schedules. You drive when you want to drive, you know, after this interview, I can hop in my car. As long as it's clean, I can turn the app on, and I think there's a bit of dog care in there right now, but, you know, and I can start accepting rides here in Arlington, and I can drive, and as soon as I feel that I don't want to, I can stop. And the money in this area is, you know, it's never enough, but this is one of the best markets for driving, and especially the ride share, and I do Excel, like I have a SUV. The money can be decent. It's definitely better than, you know, comparable minimum wage jobs. I used to work at Dunkin' Donuts. It's far better than that. Better than Dunkin' Donuts. That's a great advertising. Yeah. I mean, I miss working in a coffee shop, but it waking up, having to wake up at five in the morning to go in for a morning shift to make, you know, minimum wage, plus maybe two bucks an hour in tips, having a manager breathing down your neck, having to deal with disrespectful customers. You know, people have, that's people's experience of being an employee. And so with Uber and Lyft, we do have more flexibility, a bit more control. On the other side, though, we're really not independent. There's a degree of independence, but really everything is controlled by the algorithm. It's a, as a driver, it seems like you're on your own, but from the company's perspective, they know where we all are. It's highly coordinated. There's millions of workers working together. And so there's a lot of aspects that we don't have control over. And there's also, we believe that they create really a, they keep the system precarious. There's many issues with the app that they could fix. And we think that they specifically, they want drivers to feel insecure. They want drivers to be unsure about exactly how the app works, unsure, you know, how the levers are being pulled behind the curtain, which is the algorithm. And so that can be really frustrating. And it's incredibly unpersonal, unpersonable. You don't interact with a human. You interact with the algorithm when you, I had an issue where I was trying to adjust a fare that was incorrect. I called customer support. I spoke with somebody, you know, a nice enough person, but they don't have the authority to deal with the issue. So when you have issues that are outside of, you know, what they have the authority to deal with, you know, they, the guy just marked it satisfactorily resolved it wasn't. My issue wasn't resolved and there's no way to escalate. And they make it really difficult. I mean, that's by design. They underfund the services. So it can be quite a very frustrating experience when it goes wrong. So you say it's very precarious. What do you mean? I mean, what's it actually like to do it? What's the money like? What's it like on a normal day, you know, for you? Yeah. Well, let's start with the second part and we can go back to precarity. For me, I drive on the weekends because that's when the money's best. You do have flexibility, but if you want to make money, you have to drive when there's a lot of customers, which means and when there's bonuses. So the base rate that per mile, the per minute that you get is probably just at minimum wage and it's really dependent on the different types of bonuses, which are mostly on the weekend in order to actually make good money. So on the one hand, you don't have a set schedule. On the other hand, if you want to make money, you need to drive during times that are, you know, most people would rather not be driving at 2 a.m. on a Friday night. I'm a young guy. I'd love to be, you know, socializing with my friends who, you know, work during the week. Right. If I work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday, I'm not going to make good money. I have to work Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So tell us, what's the money actually like on an average thing? What do you do? And I assume you have a lot of expenses. If you have a nice car, that doesn't come cheap, I assume. Yeah. Well, when the money's good, I can make as much as $50 an hour gross and I estimate that's about 70% profit because you have, I mean, the increasing cost of gas. I don't have a hybrid or an electric vehicle, the wear and tear, tires, depreciation, and just other costs of businesses, which are, you know, they definitely add up. And I think a lot of drivers, especially when they first start, they're not aware of what the real cost of operating. So they see they're making $25 an hour and they think that they're making $25 an hour, but really they're not. They're making, you know, maybe they're making $18 once they factor in all those expenses. So I think that's part of this business model is that they've shifted all the operating costs or most of the operating costs to the drivers and we're the ones who maintain the fleet. Okay, so you've got to pay all the expenses for your car, the insurance, the gas, the oil changes, car payments, everything else. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think you also have to, you know, pay the capital cost of the car or the car payments or whatever your own arrangement is. All the upfront costs. Yeah. And they also have a, I don't personally do this, but they have a rental program. And I think those drivers are really the most exploited, I mean, it's the most close to a digital feudalism where they're really almost like sharecroppers. They rent the car. So they have to pay several hundred dollars a week to rent the car. And then they're also sometimes getting a lower per mile and per minute rate. Oh really? So it's very hard when you're making, you know, small money to get out of that cycle. And that also puts downward pressure on our wages because anybody without a vehicle can drive and make these companies a lot of money and accept, you know, if you have to, if you're making less money, you have to work more. So they're taking a lot of trips from the other guys. So on a normal trip, how much money does Uber get or Lyft get and how much do you get? Yeah. So it's changed considerably. There's no set percentage. Some drivers think there is, but from my understanding, there's never been a set percentage. But it used to definitely be drivers would get a larger percentage. Now Uber takes between 40 and 60 percent of the fare. So on a 15 minute trip, 20 minute trip, the passenger might pay, you know, $18 and I might get $9 and the company would get $9. And then that's before like promotion surges. So the most basic, simple promotion is on an individual ride when there's high demand, you know, not enough drivers, probably every passenger is familiar with this, every customer that you have to pay a higher rate during those times. And often they take a very large percentage of that surge. Oh, they do. You know, if the surge is $50, we might get $5 or $10 and they're pocketing the rest. Right. Yeah. On average, it ends up being 40 to 60 percent. Right. And you said it's very precarious for you. Do you think the algorithm does that? Could you explain what you mean by how is it precarious or uncertain, I guess? Yeah. So it's uncertain for drivers and then we would go further and say we think it's intentionally uncertain. How so? Okay. So let's break that into two. So first of all, it's unclear how the algorithm makes decisions about whether people, who's getting the ride, how the promotions work. There's a lot of speculation amongst drivers and scholars and policy experts about whether, for example, people with non-white names are being paid less because the company suspects that those people will work for less. Oh, really? Yeah, absolutely. You don't know where you're going to when you pick somebody up. So that's a big challenge. And then the big thing is deactivation, that a lot of drivers experience deactivation and most of them, from the hundreds of drivers I've spoken with, it's unfair deactivation. Deactivation is like getting fired. Yeah, it's a euphemism for being fired. Deactivation, five syllables for being fired, that's maybe one or two maybe. And it's often temporary because often people get reactivated, so it's a little different from being fired because most people get fired, don't get hired back. But it is being fired. So I mean, of course, if you're driving drunk, if you're sexually harassing your passengers, if you're just driving unsafely, you shouldn't be operating what's essentially a public utility. And we do need to keep our roads safe, we need to keep the business professional. No driver is against that. I don't think anybody wants an unprofessional industry. But the issue is that drivers are deactivated unfairly. For example, a common example is a passenger gets in your car, marijuana is legal in this state, they reek of weed, maybe they were just smoking or I'm sure many drivers have transported marijuana around the Commonwealth, you can tell. They get out of your car, the next person gets in and they say, my driver was smoking weed and they report you in the app and then it's on you to substantiate. They take the passenger's word, which is different from the taxi system where if you have a complaint against the taxi driver, there's a formal process and yeah, so it's basically guilty until proven innocent. So this also happens, drivers being reported driving unsafely or for alcohol, I mean I had one driver, he said his passenger reported him for drinking, he's never had a drink in his life. And on top of that, there's an incentive for passengers to abuse that system because sometimes you get free ride credit if you do that. And yeah, lately over the pandemic, there's still I believe a mask mandate for drivers in place and for passengers, but it's on us to enforce it, right? Somebody gets into your car, they're not wearing a mask, you tell them to put their mask on, you know, if they don't comply, you can remove them from the car, which costs you money, but if they do, they get in, they comply, you know, they're annoyed, they get out and then they report you for driving unsafely, right, to retaliate. And so Uber and Lyft, they put the responsibility of enforcing these restrictions on us, but if you actually enforce them, you're making yourself vulnerable to retaliation from, you know, this reactionary movement of people who, you know, are unwilling to keep us safe, right, you're in a confined space with a deadly life. I've also heard that every so often, they have to do a criminal background check. And a lot of times, this is what I've heard, it takes a long time to do that, and then you can't work, is that what's going on? Yeah, so there's a background check that's state mandated, which again is perfectly fine. We don't want, you know, people who have, you know, a history of driving unsafely or other problems. You know, we want to keep the industry safe and responsible. But what happens is you'll get your background check pulled. Usually it's every six months and it's a two step process. So first they, the companies send it to Checker, which is a background check sort of platform. So they subcontract to Checker and that normally takes only a few days. And then it goes to the Department of Public Utilities, which is the Massachusetts government agency that oversees transportation network companies Uber and Lyft. And they run your background check as well. And that's where often the delays are. And the whole time, even if you had a clean background check before, you're out of work. And so my Uber background check, and I prefer driving with Uber because I find it to be better money, was out for three weeks. It was held up at the DPU and I couldn't drive with Uber for three weeks. So that's, you know, another form of precarity. You know, luckily I was still had my Lyft app, you know, active so I could go to Lyft, but it was, I took a big pay cut. And what is MassDrivers United trying to do something about that? Or what is MassDrivers United trying to do about these various problems and the uncertainty? We don't understand why a driver who has a clean background check should be off the road while their background check is being updated, right? If it comes back, you know, with issues, then pull them off the road. OK, but in the meantime, it should be, you know, innocent until proven guilty. And we do also want to work with and we've been in communication with the DPU around, you know, that they think that three weeks is, you know, an acceptable timeframe, but for a worker to be out of work for somebody who needs to feed their family and pay rent, you know, our landlord doesn't say, oh, right. Hey, you don't have to pay rent this week because the DPU is too slow. So they really need to be fully funded. And I think with with any government entity and with the companies, drivers are an afterthought if they're if we're thought of at all. And so our job is to and our goal is to give a voice to drivers and to organize drivers to make sure that our concerns are met. Right. So what is MassDrivers United really trying to do with what are sort of your goals here? Yeah, so we're registered as a union. Obviously, we're not unionized. We haven't won. That would be a tremendous victory. But we are legally a union in terms of the state and a union at its simplest essence is when workers come together to fight for better working conditions, fair pay and for respect and dignity on the job. So our goal is to win a grassroots democratic union for all app-based app-based drivers, app-based transport workers. So rideshare, food delivery, and even drivers like Amazon Flex drivers. So anybody who's working from an app to do, you know, driving on a car, on a moped, I suppose a bicycle too, that's our industry. And that's our goal is to have a full union with a full contract. And there's a lot of fights that we see as stepping stones to get there because unionizing Uber, you know, we have an estimated 100 to 200,000 drivers. I mean, there's over 200,000 drivers registered in the state. Not all of them are driving. 200,000? Over 200,000 have registered. Really? So a lot of those of course have fallen off or they only drive, you know, a little bit, but there's tens and tens of thousands of drivers just in Massachusetts. It would be, you know, the biggest bargaining new bargaining unit in, you know, more than two decades. So it's a it's a tremendous hurdle and that doesn't even and we have additional hurdles around misclassification. So we're not going to get there right away. We want to find victories that we can win along the way to build power, build confidence. So what would fair play dignity and respect look like? Yeah, if you could form a union for, yeah. Well, I've never drivers at Mass Drivers United. Yeah. I've never met a driver who wanted to be paid for doing not for sitting in that car. We're happy to work. Honestly, I enjoy the work. I, you know, sometimes it it stinks to be stuck in traffic, but I love the Commonwealth and I love driving around the city, exploring new places and you get to meet some of the most amazing people, professors from all over the world, business people, tourists, you know, people from all different neighborhoods, walks of life, ethnicities, nationalities that you might not otherwise meet. And so it's really, in that sense, it's a great job. And we love the flexibility, but the dignity and respect. What would that really look like? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, first and foremost, it's about pay, right? Because we don't do the work for fun. We don't do the work, you know, to spend time to take up our days. We do it for money, right? We do it for money so that we can pay our bills and take care of the things that we need to do in life. So having a fair shake of what the drivers deserve, the CEO, the shareholders are not delivering passengers. They're not delivering groceries. They're not delivering food. We're the ones who do the work and we should benefit. And this, you know, 40 to 60 percent is unfair. It doesn't cost, you know, 50 percent of a ride to run the app or to run the marketing or, you know, whatever they're doing at the corporate level. So and we've drivers used to be paid a lot more and there's been pay cut after pay cut over the over the 10 years or so that these companies have been more existed. So a living wage, a guaranteed living wage for drivers, a voice on the job and power on the job, the ability if you have an issue, a legitimate issue, a legitimate concern to get it adjusted, to have a grievance and job security that you're not going to be unfairly deactivated for no reason with no recourse. And also respect from the, I mean, I think in all customer facing industries, there's this really problematic and sometimes terrible tyranny of the customer is always right. This over deference to the customer. We want to provide great quality service. You know, somebody comes in from out of Massachusetts. I'm happy to tell them about the city. Make sure they have a great time in their visit. Happy to do that. But there is absolutely abuse from customers, whether they're drunk, whether they're racist, you know, which I don't, I've had racist passengers and they say, oh, thank God you speak English, expecting me to, you know, go along with their, you know, xenophobic views. And obviously black and brown drivers experience that on a daily basis. And women drivers experience tremendous sexual harassment. And to a lesser degree, sexual assault. So making sure that drivers are safe and that there are consequences for customers, real consequences. If you're, if a customer is malicious to drivers, if they make drivers feel unsafe, that these people are barred from the platform and that drivers have justice. And so I think those are some of the big issues around dignity and justice. But really it's about being able to go to work, do your part, do your share in making this economy run. And at the end of the day, have most of the value that you're creating. Be able to bring that home to support your family. Right. And some of us are old enough to remember when Uber and Lyft didn't exist and you would take a cab from the airport or if you needed to get around town and didn't have a car. And I don't know what's happening with the cab drivers, but I assume they had, they were employees, some of them anyway. Well, employees. Yeah, it was really an arc. I mean, the, I mean, first of all, Uber and Lyft, they don't like to describe themselves as cabs. But I believe that the original name for Uber was Uber cab or it was Uber taxi. I think it was Uber cab, right? So they've always been taxi services. Just two weeks ago, Uber entered an agreement with the yellow cabs in New York to provide yellow cabs through the on the platform. We are taxi drivers, right? And basically you're at the mercy of this algorithm, which you don't really understand. It seems how it works or how it goes. Well, I want to thank you. Do you have any other thoughts of what mass drivers United is doing or what the public, those of there are a lot of us that are not Uber drivers? Yeah, well, there's a huge question, a ballot question that Uber and Lyft are spending likely a hundred million dollars on and they want to tell voters that this is going to be good for drivers, that it's about protecting our flexibility and it's a big lie. This is the referendum November 2022, which we're now calling prop 22. That's what it was called in California. Eventually, it'll have its own name. Right. But they're proposing a false choice, either flexibility or worker rights. And there's no law that prevents us from having both. What we're giving up with this is the right to unionize all the hundreds years old worker rights. Overtime paid sick leave, minimum wage, anti-discrimination laws. We would be giving those up. And they have a really well-tailored and cynical messaging strategy where Uber and Lyft and these companies, Big Tech, are appropriating the left, the progressive movements, narratives around race, around gender, around class. Let me just interrupt. Sure. If Mass Drivers United had a word or you have like we have one minute to go to voters, what would you say to voters who are going to get in the voting booth in November? Yeah, I mean, vote no. What would Mass? Yeah, vote no on Big Tech's initiative because it's not good for drivers. You know, this is not good for drivers. It's not good for drivers. It's taking away our rights. It's going to make our organization possibly illegal. We would be in violation of anti-trust law as a union of. So it's bad for the drivers. It's bad for the drivers. They're going to spend a hundred million dollars to say it's good. But the truth is that this is taking drivers rights away. And what we really need is a full union. And we're going to keep fighting for that. OK. Well, Henry DeGru, thank you for standing up for Uber, Lyft and Instacart and all those other folks that are taking me and many other people all around the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And again, I'm Michael Jacoby Brown, your host, where we hold these truths. We're very glad today to have had Henry DeGrut, a leader in Mass Drivers United here in Massachusetts. And we look forward to seeing you at our next show. So thanks a lot for tuning in and we hope to see you soon. Thank you. Thanks so much, Michael. Thank you.