New York City is considering new pay rules for Uber drivers

According to the authors, this incentive would remedy a key inefficiency of the current system, namely that companies like Uber and Lyft attract too many drivers on the road to reduce pbadenger waiting times. This offer degrades wages because drivers can only earn money when they have a pbadenger in their car.

Compensation rules would apply to four major automotive service applications – Uber, Lyft, Via and Juno – that provide more than 10,000 trips each day. The study, which relied mainly on data collected from companies by the taxi board, was written by Dr. James Parrott, from the New York Business Center to the New School and the Professor. Michael Reich of the University of California at Berkeley.

Zubin Soleimany, a lawyer for the Taxi Workers Alliance, a group that advocates for professional drivers, criticized the proposal to accept the general salary structure of the application industry, which, he said, created a race down. this hurts both the drivers of the applications and the taxi drivers. His group prefers that apps charge at least the regulated taxi fare and give drivers a guaranteed percentage of that fare.

The proposal has at least two potentially significant flaws. Mr Soleimany pointed out that application drivers might end up having to work harder over time for the same amount of money. As drivers work a larger portion of each hour, the rates per mile and minute drop, which does not allow them to get out financially.

But in an interview, Mr. Reich said that his calculations showed that the rate of use measures activity – only growing by a few percentage points, which means that drivers would only work only slightly more (around 2.5 minutes per hour on average in a plausible scenario) for substantially higher pay (about 22.5% more per hour on average)

"We think they'll see this like a good deal, "said Mr. Reich.

A second problem is the game potential of the new system. Since drivers must be paid $ 17.22 at the time, regardless of whether or not they earn this amount by carrying pbadengers, they may choose to simply refuse rides and collect the minimum wage while remaining inactive.

"We have not seen the full report. the proposed new policy seems to create financial incentives for drivers to provide less service, "said Adrian Durbin, a spokesman for Lyft. "Lyft is committed to working with policy makers to find a better solution."