Those who do use and can afford use of Uber misrepresent the public at large by equating themselves with the public who cannot afford Uber. What this amounts to is misrepresenting Uber as a public good, which it isn’t.
And if it were, it would demand state subsidy for broader accessibility–but given the Aquino regime’s penchant for privatization pretending to be no more than innocuous public-private partnerships, it’s best not to get into that discussion while talking about Uber in-depth, though certainly it has its ramifications on the matter.
(This regime, after all, has all too willingly sold public infrastructure machinery for public services for power, education and healthcare to the private sector. It has made entire highways connecting cities and outskirts up for grabs. It might as well sell public transport to the most convenient bidder–which it actually has been doing, in observance of what previous regimes have been doing. [Read: Dotc-Mrt3.] But I digress.)
I admit to never having ridden an Uber vehicle. I simply cannot afford it. And if I take measures to afford it, I lose my ability to afford other things I would rather spend on because the state is in no way obliged to provide them–books and beer, among others.
The conveniences of Uber to the monied cannot be denied: most of those who use Uber like Uber–it is a fact, and perfectly understandable. They extol its availability upon demand, praise its measures for security, fawn over the politeness of its drivers and quality of its vehicles. Pushed against imaginary middle-class walls I would avail of it myself if I could, which I could not. In short: they value its value for money. As consumers, they get what they pay for.
But in fact, they get even more than what they pay for. Among what they get that they conveniently ignore is this: Every peso that goes to Uber also goes to the further disenfranchisement of the Filipino laborer. Supporters of Uber actively fund the widespread because systemic, methodical because systematic, aggression against Filipino laborers.
From the end of taxi drivers–themselves laborers–Uber constructs an environment not just of unfair but of unwarranted competition.
Taxi operations are regulated by government–and rightly so, for regulation’s role is to protect commuters from abuse and in turn protect drivers from irate passengers. Rejecting passengers, selecting passengers, jacking up the fare so it doesn’t conform to the official fare matrix–all these are forms of abuse government regulation is obliged to monitor and eradicate. Forms of abuse every commuter who resorts to taxis when other forms of transport fail is familiar with.
[quote_center]It is government’s failure to enforce its own regulatory measures, marred by a long history of corruption, that has infused app-based transport services like Uber with what seems to be urgency–that is, demand masquerading as necessity.[/quote_center]
It is government’s failure to enforce its own regulatory measures, marred by a long history of corruption, that has infused app-based transport services like Uber with what seems to be urgency–that is, demand masquerading as necessity. Money allows the monied to sidestep regulatory breakdown and get the rides they demand and can afford. They shell out cash–and are willing to shell out cash–for an experience they need not have shelled out cash for to begin with had government regulation simply been enforced.
But this obfuscates a fact about the material conditions of labor every driver goes thru: Incredible precarity. Despite the minimum wage remaining obscenely low, taxi drivers are denied even this basic dignity of working–a condition they share with contractual laborers such as mall and department store salesladies. The pay they take home consists of what passengers have paid exceeding their boundary–the amount of money they are obliged to surrender to the taxi operator on every day of work.
And so on the street they hustle–they reject passengers, they select passengers, they jack up the fare so it doesn’t conform to the fare matrix–based on what allows them to settle their boundaries quick thence make a little bit more just to be able to bring home a little bit more. Government regulation which government itself has failed to enforce must in the 1st place preclude humane labor conditions for those working in transport.
In effect, in light of the above, what Uber does is club taxi drivers further into a corner with an app for a contemporary clubbing implement. If this is what Bam Aquino defends as an innovation we must embrace, then certainly Uber is innovative insofar as it constructs novel ways by which the monied oppress the poor. The kind senator, in effect, in his yellowing chubbiness, is asking us to understand them spitting on us.
From the end of commuters–themselves laborers–Uber constructs an environment not just of unfair but of unwanted competition as well.
When the trains break down, when the train station platforms are as overflowing with commuters as the few dilapidated trains that come, when the train stations themselves threaten to explode, when the buses aren’t moving in Manila’s notorious highway marsh of traffic, when the buses are brimming with passengers, when the buses themselves threaten to explode–Many of us end up competing with other commuters for the few cabs there are on the street. More often than not, against our will. Cabs we don’t resort to on an everyday basis, but cabs that we turn to when we have a little bit more money to spare for bringing our exhausted bodies home or to work and other modes of transport have proven circumstantially untenable.
With Uber having encroached on territory serviced by taxi operations, commuters are even less likely to find a cab willing to operate as it should–sans selection and rejection, sans fare negotiation. Uber having already taken the passengers willing to spare the extra cash, those who aren’t willing are stuck dealing with taxi drivers who, in the rarity of transport, effectively exercise extortion–selecting only passengers who can pay more, rejecting passengers who can’t, leaving commuters at the mercy of their discretion moderated by their operators’ greed.
In effect, in light of the above, what Uber does is club commuters further into a corner with an app for a contemporary clubbing implement. If this is what Bam Aquino defends as an innovation we must embrace, then certainly Uber is innovative insofar as it constructs novel ways by which the monied oppress the poor. The kind senator, in effect, in his yellowing chubbiness, is asking us to understand them spitting on us. Yet again.
And all this has only been to talk, not even exhaustively, of commuters and taxi drivers as laborers caught in the midst of this plight. Not in any of the above has there been any mention of Uber drivers themselves. Drivers who are subjected to precarious labor conditions. Uber, as one face of this ‘sharing economy’ en vogue among exploiters and middle-class consumers, constructs for profit.
For profit.
[quote_center]Bam Aquino’s support of Uber’s labor practice declares his affirmation of and agreement with the obscene contractualization of labor taking place at large, in effect cheapening labor–contractualization that simultaneously pushes wages further down and breaks even the possibility of workers uniting for their collective betterment.[/quote_center]
Bam Aquino’s support of Uber’s labor practice declares his affirmation of and agreement with the obscene contractualization of labor taking place at large, in effect cheapening labor–contractualization that simultaneously pushes wages further down and breaks even the possibility of workers uniting for their collective betterment.
The good senator is asking us all to embrace innovation, generously sidestepping how he has mangled what innovation should mean–a dialectics of improvement toward radical social transformation. But ultimately what he is really making us embrace is the marginalization of our own needs, the continuous privatization of what ought to remain public–in short, our own oppression.
All so others can profit from our misery.
#bampanes #embracetrapo
