Driver Gives Rideshare Rights A Lyft

“It’s been a journey getting here,” Uber driver Jesenia Rodriguez said as she parked her boyfriend’s stoplight red Toyota across from the state Capitol building.

She was running late. First she had to drop her grandkids off at Jepson School. Then she missed three exits on her way into Hartford while fielding phone calls from fellow rideshare and delivery drivers.

But now she had arrived, with a message to deliver.

Fortunately, Rodriguez wasn’t on the clock ferrying Lyft passengers.

She was one of 27 members of the nonprofit Connecticut Drivers United (CDU) taking a break from chauffeuring customers Wednesday morning in an effort to steer the legislature in the direction of rights for rideshare drivers. 

The journey to which Rodriguez referred wasn’t just the 45-minute drive from New Haven to Hartford, but the multi-year trek towards enacting minimum standards for drivers for companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash. 

Since its inception around five years ago, CDU, which Rodriguez cofounded, has been driving home the need for minimum pay standards, compensation transparency and protections from driver deactivation within the rideshare industry. 

This legislative session, which began Wednesday, CDU is working to get a rewritten version of Senate Bill No. 1180. The bill was heard but not approved last year by the General Assembly’s Labor and Public Employees Committee. Advocates are working to bring it back for review with a few additional measures.

The bill as written would set base pay rates per mile and minute, ensure drivers are compensated even when customers cancel a requested trip, and mandate that all tips go directly to workers, among a slate of pay upgrades. It would also require that companies are transparent about how much drivers, customers and the company themselves pay and receive from each ride. The bill demands apps provide receipts stating the length of a trip, the number of miles, how much a customer paid, what the driver was paid, how much the customer tipped and what deductions are made to the driver’s fare. The bill would also pave the way for Connecticut rideshare drivers to be able pick up customers out of state. A new provision also offers protections against unfair deactivations of drivers. (Read more about some of the complaints consistently cited by New Haveners employed by Uber and Lyft with those transportation companies here.)

In For The Long Ride

“I love what I do — I love to drive,” Rodriguez, who works through Uber and Lyft, said as she steered toward the Capitol.

Rodriguez started working through rideshare apps nearly a decade back after losing her job at a factory producing smoke detectors. ​“I used to do it really fast, but my hands started hurting,” she said. When her factory bosses decided she could no longer keep up, she turned both hands to the steering wheel. Through gig work with Uber, she was able to work flexible hours while raising her three children and pursuing a degree in business at Gateway Community College.

“Back in the days you could make your money in four to five hours,” she said. But after a few years, she noticed her rates were mysteriously dropping. She started talking with other drivers in hopes of figuring out why it was taking twice as long to bring in the same income they’d been earning at the start.

That’s how she met her now-boyfriend, Tyree Brown, who happened to be sitting in the passenger seat of his Toyota Thursday during the drive to Hartford.

While having breakfast with a friend one morning, Rodriguez said, she forgot to turn off her app and accidentally fielded a ride request from Brown. Rather than turn it down and risk hurting her call acceptance rate, she gave Brown a ring and told him she could send somebody in her place to pick him up.

“Don’t worry,” he said. ​“I’ll wait for you.”

“Um … OK,” Rodriguez responded, quickly wrapping up her plans and running out the door to meet Brown.

Upon learning they were both drivers, the pair exchanged numbers. ​“I just wanted to network,” she said, but Brown had another strategy in mind. ​“In life you just gotta have patience,” Brown said, and then your fate will come to you.

Rodriguez’s patience, meanwhile, was wearing thin as problems kept popping up in the rideshare apps. Driver accounts would be deactivated following false accusations from customers. Uber and Lyft started pocketing part of their tips and more of their fares, the riders said. (The companies have told a different story.) Rodriguez realized that the rates for her rides had dropped so low that she was rarely making more than minimum wage.

She took matters into her own hands by teaming up with driver Carlos Gomez to start rallying support for state changes regarding how rideshare monoliths are allowed to treat their workers. They formed an advocacy group for drivers known as Connecticut Drivers United, which has been carrying the rideshare revolution forward, though its final destination — the passage of SB1180 — may seem hard to see given this year’s short and competitive legislative session.

To Lobby With Love

A few closed ramps, missed exits and hands-free phone calls with other lost colleagues later, Rodriguez and Brown convened in the Capitol lobby with other five-star rideshare workers.

Attorney James Bhandary-Alexander readied drivers for the transition from their cars into the Capitol. Bhandary-Alexander helped form CDU after he stepped up to represent a driver wrongly arrested for campaigning against exploitation by rideshare apps outside of New Haven’s Union Station

The long drive would turn into a long walk into ​“the belly of the beast,” as Bhandary-Alexander put it, away from the domed Capitol across a moving walkway into the distant legislative affairs offices. 

Following a brief conference, the crew crammed into the Capitol hallways. They joined other advocates and lobbyists behind velvet ropes separating them from the elected officials they sought to get on their (or their bill’s) side. 

“I love your suit!” driver Alex Johnson, who, like her peers, was dressed in a custom, cobalt-blue CDU tee-shirt, cheered at reps as they walked by in snappy business attire.

“I always be loving your clothes, you come out stylin’,” she shouted at the back of a bright orange suit disappearing down the hall.

Most officials gave brief but enthusiastic affirmations to the drivers. 

“We just want better pay, protection from termination, transparency, and some other stuff,” Bhandary-Alexander said to State Sen. Rick Lopes. 

“I’ve never said no to an increase in pay for anybody. So I’m there!” Lopes responded with a big thumbs up. ​“I voted for it last year.”

Other officials in support of the bill gave advice to the drivers about how to strategize their campaign. Get Senate Labor Committee Co-Chair Manny Sanchez on board, recommended Rep. Peter Tercyak. Both Tercyak and Sanchez represent New Britain.

“Tell him this is the bill Peter talks to you about. Peter started it, and you should finish it, Sanchez!” he told Rodriguez and Carlos Gomez, the other founder of CDU.

Professional lobbyist Beverly Brakeman, who has done pro-bono advocacy on behalf of CDU in the past, offered the same advice. ​“There’s Sanchez,” she whispered to Rodriguez once she saw him making his way down the hall. ​“Go talk to him!”

Rodriguez rushed over, vying for Sanchez’s attention. He responded with elbow bumps and smiles, but didn’t engage further. 

“He told me to ​‘keep working hard,’” Rodriguez reported, throwing her hands up in the air, after Sanchez breezed right past her.

Some, like Stamford Rep. Hubert Delany, put more time into the back and forth.

“These apps are run completely by algorithms,” Johnson told him, resulting in ​“your everyday driver” often making less than minimum wage through their work. 

“Has this been raised before?” Delany asked. 

“Yes, we made it into the state senate. We were so close and then luck just ran out,” Johnson said. 

“You remember what the fiscal note was for it?” he inquired.

“I don’t,” Johnson said. 

“I’d like to actually see the bill,” he said. ​“If you ever want to meet to just have an informative conversation,” Delany said, whipping out a digital business card which Rodriguez scanned into her phone, he would be happy to get together.

By noon, when Gov. Ned Lamont was slated to deliver his state-of-the-state address, the drivers retreated to a side room for a debrief before heading back to the roads to make some change.

“How was today?” Bhandry-Alexander asked the group.

“The last one who spoke really took time to listen to us,” Rodriguez said of Delany. 

“Jesenia got a personal number!” Johnson declared.

“But she’s got a boyfriend!” another driver interjected, prompting cackles from the group.

Lobbyist Brakeman joined the crowd for their reflections. The Labor Committee will meet on Tuesday, she said, and could decide then or throughout early March on whether or not to consider the bill for adoption

If the bill moves forward, the state will hold a public hearing — at which point, she said, ​“we’ll need more drivers,” to testify in support.

The apps might be saturated with drivers competing for rides, but not enough of those people were coming out to call for collective rights, she said, to ensure forward motion.

“I’m gonna go to New Britain,” Rodriguez said, to offer rides while rallying residents to get their representatives on board with their bill. 

Driving The Message Home

Back in the Toyota, Rodriguez headed back to New Haven to check in on her granddaughter, who had been sent home sick from school. 

Meanwhile, her boyfriend, still in the passenger seat of his own car, marveled aloud at Rodriguez’s efforts.

At first, he remembered, he didn’t understand Rodriguez’s commitment to organizing. 

“We had our own bills to pay,” he said. But after CDU managed to get the first rideshare bill under review by the state last year, he said, ​“from that point on I stuck with her.” 

“If we don’t get change,” he said, ​“we’re gonna keep getting $2 per ride and getting treated like nobodies.”

Rodriguez, on the other hand, said she enjoys organizing because it’s another way to show care — not just for her family, but for her community. 

“I see how other drivers are struggling,” she said, including workers who are sleeping in their cars in order to afford to deliver groceries in those same vehicles. 

“Since I know New Haven, I’ve been here 28 years, I can help,” she said. After moving to New Haven from Puerto Rico as a teen, Rodriguez said, she’s able to assist drivers who don’t speak English with translation services and direct other rideshare workers in need to local food pantries and social services.

“I like getting people home safely,” she added, including oft-obnoxious college students dependent on a sober ride home. 

Rodriguez also likes showing new drivers the ropes, helping them to hack a system that could otherwise cheat them. For example: ​“Never take the long rides.” Because ​“you’re gonna put mileage on your car and beat it up for nothing.”

Outside of the Toyota, however, she encourages the opposite: Invest in the long ride. Even if it takes a while, she argued, political change is possible.