Jon Miltimore is upset that he won’t be able to use Uber or Lyft ridesharing services in the Twin Cities after the Minneapolis City Council voted to make the business uneconomical:
“UBER 4U” by afagen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft announced last week that they are pulling up stakes in the Twin Cities because of a new ordinance designed to raise driver pay.
The Minneapolis City Council voted 10–3 to override the veto of Mayor Jacob Frey, passing a policy that will raise the pay of drivers to the equivalent of $15.57 per hour.
In response to the plan, Uber and Lyft announced that they will cease offering rides beginning May 1 throughout the entire Twin Cities, the 16th largest metro in the United States, saying operations were economically “unsustainable” under the plan.
“We are disappointed the Council chose to ignore the data and kick Uber out of the Twin Cities, putting 10,000 people out of work and leaving many stranded,” Uber said in a statement.
As a resident of the Twin Cities suburbs, I find this news a bit alarming. In fact, I find it infuriating.
City Council supporters say they simply want drivers to earn the minimum wage, but if that’s the case, they passed the wrong ordinance. The Star Tribune reports that council members “seemed oblivious” to a recent Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry study that concluded drivers could be paid $0.49 per minute and $0.89 per mile and make the minimum wage.
“By contrast, the plan approved by the City Council guarantees a floor of $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute,” the newspaper reports.
In other words, the wage plan the council passed doesn’t appear remotely close to the minimum wage. But this ignores the larger problem: Neither the Minneapolis City Council nor the state of Minnesota should be setting the wages of Uber or Lyft drivers.
Nobody is forcing drivers to give rides. The arrangement between ride-share companies and drivers is an entirely voluntary one. This is the beauty of gig work. It allows people flexibility and choice about how they’d like to spend their time.
