Today and tomorrow, some VTCs will not be serving Nice airport or the city’s stations, and for good reason: they are on strike. They are accusing Uber of ‘stealing’ money from them by increasing commissions by up to 45%.
‘Today, the platforms are suffocating us. They want to kill us, except that without us, they are nothing’, exclaims A. D., a VTC driver for 7 years. There weren’t many of them outside the gates of terminal 1 at Nice airport this morning. The VTC drivers had announced a ‘total blackout’ from 6am on Thursday and were counting on their 3,000 other colleagues to make their voices heard. It’s 7.40am and there are only around twenty of them. ‘Instead of coming to defend their trade, they’d rather go to work. That’s why there aren’t many of us here today, and that saddens me’, says A. D., ’Maybe we’ll get there. D., ‘Maybe they’ll show up a bit later’, he adds.
A platform that does not respect their profession
The aim of this strike is to make themselves heard and understood. The transport platform Uber has decided to change its commission rates. It has gone from a fixed rate of 25% to a variable rate of between 3% and up to 45%. This new rate varies according to the number of journeys made by each driver, but also according to customer profiles. Sabina Sabena, President of Union VTC 06/83, explains: ‘If you’re a student, and you have an Uber account, the application has your profile, it knows your age, it knows that you tend to take Uber X because it’s cheaper, so for someone like you, the commission will be around 10%. Now I’m a Saudi, I’ve got money, I just open the app and order without looking at the price, so I’m going to get a 45% commission’.
The problem facing VTC drivers today is that they are taxed on the amount paid by the customer, rather than on the amount they actually receive. For Sabina, this is the last straw: ‘That’s 45% of the customer’s payment not going into our pockets, and that’s unacceptable. The platform was creating insecurity and this time it’s too much’.
A. D. has been a VTC driver for 7 years and has no intention of stopping. He loves his job above all else and would do anything to protect it: ‘I want to defend my job, but we have to be able to earn a living. We invest our own money in it because we love what we do and because we also want to put our customers in good conditions’, he confides.
For the moment, only Uber is affected by this increase in commission. But according to Sabina, the Bolt transport platform is also planning to switch to this new system.
Uber disrupting a profession ?
With the expansion and changes to the Uber platform, VTC drivers are the first to be affected. The way they work, and their salaries, are changing. ‘At the start of Uber, a journey from Nice airport to Cannes cost a minimum of €60. Today it’s €32. We’ve halved our earnings and with this new rule we’ll earn next to nothing’, explains A. D. The driver doesn’t feel respected since these new commissions were introduced: ‘They don’t take us into consideration, even though we’re the ones on the ground with the customers, and it’s purely and simply a lack of respect and a lack of consideration’, he exclaims. Desperate, he adds: ‘Today the platforms are suffocating us, they want to kill us, except that without us, they are nothing’.
In addition to this new rule, A. D. mentions the increase in the number of VTC drivers: ‘Unfortunately, there are more and more VTC drivers because Uber allows you to finance training courses for €20, which are very shoddy. I understand that everyone wants to work, but the problem is that the profession is losing its seriousness. It’s damaging the image of our profession’.
