Uber and Lyft drivers marched to the State Office Building in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, where they presented a list of 10,000 names of workers who claim the rideshare companies have deprived them of millions of dollars in earned wages over the last six years.
More than 50 ride-share drivers marched from Pershing Square to the Reagan State Building, boxes of wage theft complaints in hand.
Jonathan Tipton Myers, who's been driving since 2014, said the march and dropping off of documents served two goals.
“Filing the wage claim for Wages that should have been paid out to drivers from 2016 to 2020,” he told KNX News’ Pete Demetriou. “The second thing is establishing a rate card that establishes transparency from their fixed price algorithm which is constantly manipulated to pull revenue from drivers and from riders, which is where they build their profit.”
Nicole Moore, a part-time driver, told the crowd that the payment algorithms used by the two companies have driven down the salaries earned by employees to unacceptable levels.
“After our expenses, after all the time we spend waiting for each ride, we're making less than $5 an hour,” she said. “Some of us, you cannot live on $5 an hour, and I hear from people every day.”
The march comes as a scheduled case conference is set for Thursday, where a Superior Court judge will bring Uber and Lyft together with multiple parties, including State Attorney General Rob Bonta.
The state and the drivers are suing the companies in an effort to determine whether a trial should be held or whether there'll be a directed action where rideshare companies will have to set up a payout schedule for drivers who've been deprived of income for a number of years.
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