Uber and Lyft just pulled out of Austin, leaving thousands of drivers out-of-work. And what's worse is that neither corporation payed a penny in severance.  Now, over 10,000 unemployed drivers are suing the companies for breaching labor laws.

Uber is a $62.5 billion corporation that pays its drivers peanuts with no benefits or protections and picks up and leaves when governments pass laws it doesn’t like. That’s not a “sharing economy,” that’s exploitation, massive deregulation and extortion.

Innovation in the taxi industry is all well and good, but not if corporations get to write the terms without any input from drivers or democratically elected governments and councils. It’s time Uber and Lyft acted like proper employers and gave their workers the proper benefits and protections every other corporation has to pay.

Tell Uber and Lyft to provide their workers with the benefits and job security they deserve.

The founders of these so-called “ride-sharing” companies might have made a cool little phone app, but the disproportionate billions they’re raking in have been made on the backs of underpaid and overworked drivers. Uber has claimed its workers make up to $90,000 per year. The reality is closer to just over $100 for an 11-hour day -- and often less.

This latest stunt in Austin shows just how committed Uber and Lyft are to its workers: if they could care less, they would. We have laws and regulations that keep corporations from holding cities at ransom when laws they don’t like get passed. If we want to hold these ride-sharing companies accountable to the same standards, we need to let them know treating workers fairly matters to us.

Tell Uber and companies like it to provide their workers with benefits.

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