Using a unique WhatsApp-based crowdsourcing tool we built, we gathered reports from more than 800 of the city’s registered drivers and interviewed 118 of them to understand the financial and mental toll of being prevented from doing their jobs.
Additionally, Bloomberg collected data on pricing to determine the impact to consumers and ran a financial model using the city’s minimum wage formula and 6-months of rides to estimate how much pay Uber and Lyft withheld from drivers.
Bloomberg’s analysis revealed that lockouts occurred practically every hour of every day of the week, making drivers’ work schedules unpredictable. Lockouts even occurred during hours when Uber told drivers they would be able to work. We found that hundreds of lockouts occurred in the proximity of surge zones, when the demand of passengers surpasses the supply of drivers, potentially increasing costs for riders. Lastly, we estimate that millions were withheld from drivers through Uber and Lyft’s manipulation of the productivity statistic underpinning New York City’s unique minimum pay formula.
We worked closely with our graphics department to produce interactive graphics for drivers to see how lockouts impact a workday for a driver, a schedule of how often drivers were locked out, annotated screenshots of lockouts during surge zones, and a calculator that showed readers how much money was withheld from drivers based on hypothetical productivity statistics.
