Omar had been driving for nearly 10-and-a-half hours when he spoke to the Manchester Evening News . As an Uber driver, that length of shift wasn’t unusual, he said.
What was unusual, he said, were his takings. “Today I started at 6am and 10-and-a-half hours later I’ve reached £71,” he explained. “That’s seven trips. I spent £40 on fuel, so I only have £31 left.”
READ MORE: Manchester named one of the best places to visit in the UK in 2023 by Time Out
It means that on this shift, Omar made £2.95 an hour doing his job. It’s one reason why he’s going on strike, with another 1,000 drivers, on December 16.
“It’s really affecting our lives and what we are doing at the moment,” he continued. “We are standing up for ourselves.”
His earnings were not just low on the day the MEN called him, he added: “Yesterday the customer paid £9.70 and I got £4.75 back (after Uber's commission and other fees). Driving to the customer took 10 minutes to drop them off at 25 minutes. That’s 35 minutes of my time for £4.75. How can I earn the living wage on that?”
Meanwhile, Rizwan Ilyas, a married-father of four from Longsight, who has worked as a taxi driver for 22 years and the last seven of them for Uber, says he regularly turns down fares for shorter distances as 'they are just not worth it'.
“I don't accept about 20 percent of the jobs that are being thrown at us," he said. "It's just not worth it. You might be travelling two-and-a-half or three miles and you are getting a fiver for it. With the cost of fuel, it's just a waste of time.
“If you were doing two miles, you are getting £3.80. That used to be £5. There's some anger, obviously, because they are trying to get us to work more and more for the same money.
“The newer drivers will be accepting these jobs but they don't know that's not proper money. There's a lot of talk about a protest. It's not fair.”
That talk of a protest has materialised, the MEN understands, in the form of a strike on December 16 — where drivers will refuse to log on to Uber, and instead ply their trade on rival taxi app Bolt instead.
Why are drivers angry?
Omar, Rizwan, and the anonymous driver all pointed to one factor behind their discontent: a new fare system. ‘Smart pricing’, sometimes called ‘dynamic pricing’, was introduced by Uber on November 21.
The company says its ‘pricing can vary by trip in order to improve reliability at certain times’, but drivers believe the firm is taking a bigger slice of the fare they earn.
Omar went on: “Before, if a customer paid £10 I would get around £5.50. Initially it was a 25 percent commission deduction, but sometimes it would reach 45 percent commission deduction. Under smart pricing, if a customer paid £10 I would expect to get £4.30 or £4.20.”
The anonymous Stalybridge cabbie believed the drop in a fee per mile to around 75p has also been caused by the introduction of the pricing system. That’s a complaint from Rizwan, too.
“The short trip pricing is so absurd that drivers are regularly declining these trips because it is not worth it,” he added. “For the long trips, drivers are being offered on average £1 per mile. I know drivers who have been offered trips where, if the distance is 17 miles, they are offered less than £17 for the trip."
What does Uber say?
Uber says it is ‘extremely rare’ for trips to come to less than £1 per mile for drivers. It added that the changes introduced — which included a 10 percent rise in the minimum fare in Manchester —mean more short trips have been accepted by its workforce.
“Uber’s pricing can vary by trip in order to improve reliability at certain times,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement. “Drivers are always shown how much they’ll be paid before accepting a trip and they receive 100 percent of this amount.
“There have been a number of important changes to the way drivers earn on Uber since 2021 - Uber is the only platform to provide holiday pay and access to a pension plan to help boost their earnings, which have grown significantly due to recent fare increases and growing rider demand.”
When will the strike be?
The drivers and the firm, at the time of writing, are at loggerheads with one another. Around 1,000 drivers have agreed not to work on December 16 — aka ‘Mad Friday’, and sign on to Bolt instead, it's understood.
“No one cares about us,” Omar said. “We’ve planned a strike on December 16 — we have created a WhatsApp chat. We have 1,000 drivers willing to participate.”
Read more of today's top stories here
READ NEXT:
- "I told him not to drink that whisky”: Man attacked stewardess after she saw him out of his seat during landing
- 'I am broken beyond words:' Family's heart break as son, 5, dies choking on a pin
- Driver died after Audi and Fiat 500 began 'racing' through the streets at high speed, jury told
- Manchester named one of the best places to visit in the UK in 2023 by Time Out
- Controlling man called partner 'dumbolino' and said 'it's like looking after a baby' after she suffered stroke
