After two years of interviewing 40 Uber drivers in the Washington, DC, area, Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor found that many stressors on Uber drivers keep them living and working below the poverty line and drowning in work-related debt.
According to the initiative’s study, drivers have extreme difficulties with both predicting earnings and calculating actual earnings due to Uber’s built-in gamification elements that change incentives and rules by the hour, much like a casino. In addition, despite working 16-hour days, some drivers do not earn enough to pay off their car debts. Thirty-two percent of drivers in the study reported falling into a “debt trap;” given the costs of an Uber lease, car insurance and Uber’s 25 percent commission and booking fees, some drivers net less than $5 an hour. Half of drivers live at or below the federal poverty level. Moreover, 30 percent of drivers reported safety concerns and physical assaults against them.
The initiative, founded in 2009, develops strategies and public policy to improve workers’ lives in a changing economy. Katie Wells, a postdoctoral fellow with the initiative, presented findings to the DC City Council in April. She and her study partners at City University of New York and George Washington University aim to equip city officials and the greater public with “clear data about what is, and what is not, happening to workers in the on-demand ride-hailing industry,” Wells says. Currently, DC laws allow Uber to keep their ride-share data private. “No data on how Uber operates is readily available, which isolates the workers and policymakers,” says Wells.
This report is one part of an ongoing, five-year Georgetown project examining Uber’s effects on urban development, vulnerable and marginalized workers, public transit services and government policymaking.
“We didn’t realize before the study how dangerous it could be for workers,” Wells says. “We hope that our findings are not systemic throughout the Uber workplace, either in DC or in the country at large, but we don’t have evidence to the contrary.” This study will continue over the next two years with the same 40 participants along with DC policymakers.
Since Uber has not raised its drivers’ commissions in response to driver protests in May, the study targets policymakers to create a commission to assess how DC benefits from these entities.
The initiative is “bringing research to practice,” Wells says. “Progress is wonderful if it pushes us into a world we actually want.”
