“There is power in a union,” traveling musician Joe Hill sang in 1913. Now, with only 12.4 percent of American workers unionized in 2008, Joe Hill’s sentiments seem archaic. But striking Washington cab drivers on Tuesday tried to remind the District of a time when Hill’s words rang true—or at least of 2007, the last time D.C. experienced cab strikes.
The cab drivers on the one-day strike have a number of grievances, according to Ali Tahmaseb, the chairman of one of the organizing unions, the Dominion of Cabdrivers. These concerns include an unresponsive Taxicab Commission, led by the irascible Commissioner Leon Swain, and the potential introduction of a New York City-style medallion system. The introdction of such a system would reduce the numer of cabs, increase prices for passengers, and make drivers dependent on the owners of operating permits.
Perhaps most injurious for the cab drivers, however, are the low fare rates paid under the meter system.
“In one of the most expensive cities in the world, they are giving one of the lowest rates to the cab drivers,” Tahmaseb said.
Besides anti-gay marriage carpetbagging, driving a cab might be the District’s most reviled profession. That’s because from the 1930s until 2007, Washington cabs operated under the Byzantinely confusing zone system. Fares were calculated not based on distance and time, as they are now, but on how many arbitrarily-laid boundaries a cab crossed in a trip. The cab drivers knew the zones better than most of their passengers, and this imbalance bred distrust and possibly trickery.
That enmity should have gone away in 2007, when Mayor Adrian Fenty did away with the zone system in favor of meters. But because cab drivers had us trapped in their bizarre zone system for so long,
Washingtonians have been enjoying a protracted and undeserved revenge. The city reduced the flag drop fee (the initial cost of any trip) from $4 to $3, and Washingtonians ridiculed some cabdriver protests, like the parade of honking cabs.
Obnoxious protests or not, the cab drivers are getting a raw deal from the city’s rates, which is obscured by D.C.’s unusually high drop fee. Washington’s drop fee is $3, and the per-mile charge is $1.50. In nearby Baltimore, however, the flag drop fee is $1.80, while the per-mile is $2.20. That means it only takes two miles before a Baltimore driver is making more than one in the District.
The comparison becomes even starker in Fairfax, Virginia, where a drop fee of $3.25 and a per-mile rate of $2.40 mean a Fairfax cab driver makes more than his D.C. colleague as soon as a passenger opens his door. This disparity could be remedied by simply raising the cost-per-mile in D.C.
Tahmaseb said Tuesday’s strike will not be the last. Other strikes could be targeted at the wards of councilmembers who do not support the cab driver’s demands, as well as around Congress, whose members Tahmaseb blames for ending the zone system.
If they go through with such targeted strikes, Tahmaseb and his colleagues will be showing the same innovation used by labor pioneer Hill and his contemporaries. That’s good for D.C. cabdrivers, who will need all of their ingenuity against a District population that is apathetic and sometimes actively working against their economic needs.
If you ever need a lift, Will Sommer is there to help at wsommer@georgetownvoice.com.
