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Lyft, Uber Drivers Banned From Tennessee Airport After Caravan for Pro-Worker Bill
"Uber, Lyft, and Metro Nashville Airport Authority are engaging in an inappropriate and malicious alliance to destroy dozens of livelihoods," said the Tennessee Drivers Union.
Mar 03, 2025
A Tennessee union announced Monday that 34 Uber and Lyft drivers received messages "informing them that they had been permanently banned" from working at Nashville's airport after joining scores of workers for a peaceful caravan there last month to support a state bill that would impact the companies.
The Tennessee Drivers Union (TDU) said in a statement that some participants, "including those in the passenger's seat not driving," were banned from providing rides at Nashville International Airport following the February 14 action, during which "participating Uber and Lyft drivers had their apps turned off."
In a message to one Uber driver obtained by Common Dreams, the company said that "Nashville International Airport (BNA) notified us that you conducted a pickup on the arrivals level of the terminal. Please note that all pickups must occur in the Uber-designated zone."
"Due to the nature of the incident, the airport is restricting certain driver-partners from accepting rides or dropping passengers off at BNA permanently, pursuant to the terms of Uber's agreement with the airport," Uber continued. "Your account appeared on the list. For that reason, your account has been permanently blocked from operating at BNA. Contact the airport for more information."
A message to a Lyft driver similarly said that "it has been reported that you were conduct detrimental to the orderly operation of the airport. That being said, at the request of the airport, you are prohibited from operating on BNA airport property indefinitely."
"To prevent future suspensions, carefully review the BNA rules and regulations," Lyft added. "Please note, citations may be given if you operate on BNA property during your suspension, and you will be responsible for paying them."
Lyft and Uber have not responded to Common Dreams' requests for comment on the bans, which come as working people face high costs and a billionaire-led assault on the federal government.
TDU said Monday that "Uber, Lyft, and Metro Nashville Airport Authority are engaging in an inappropriate and malicious alliance to destroy dozens of livelihoods. The airport is one of the only opportunities for ride-share drivers to make barely above minimum wage."
"This is an attack against dozens of workers, their families, and their communities," the union continued, noting the millions of dollars in fees the airport gets from drivers and Metro Nashville Airport Authority CEO Doug Kreulen's $600,000 salary.
As Common Dreamsreported last year, TDU has sounded the alarm about working conditions for drivers at BNA. Union members kicked off Labor Day weekend in 2024 with a strike to draw attention to demands including a cap on the number of ride-share drivers in the area, an expansion of their airport lot, and clean, working bathrooms on-site.
TDU said Monday that "this retaliation isn't a mistake," arguing that "Uber and Lyft are threatened" by Tennessee House Bill 879/Senate Bill 818, introduced last month by state Rep. Rush Bricken (R-47) and Sen. Joey Hensley (R-28).
The bill text begins by highlighting that "Tennessee is the only state in the Southeast that allows out-of-state ride-hail drivers to operate within the state, while Tennessee ride-hail drivers may not work in surrounding states."
"Tennesseans who live and work in our communities, contributing directly to our local economy, struggle to compete with an oversaturated market of out-of-state drivers," the legislation explains, calling for "a basic licensing regime."
The bill would require ride-hail drivers operating in the state to have a "transportation network license," which would require a Tennessee driver's license, or proof of residency in DeSoto County, Mississippi, or Crittenden County, Arkansas.
Companies that allow drivers to provide rides without a Tennessee-issued transportation network license would be hit with a $1,000 penalty per violation and could ultimately be banned from operating in the state.
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Watchdogs Call Out Trump AG Pick Pam Bondi's Corporate Lobbying
One democracy advocate urged senators "to carefully scrutinize Bondi's lobbying record and ask what she will do when the interests of her lobbying clients again clash with the Department of Justice she now wants to lead."
Jan 08, 2025
When President-elect Donald Trump in mid-November decided to tap former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to succeed former Congressman Matt Gaetz as his pick for U.S. attorney general, details about Bondi's career, including her time as a corporate lobbyist, began to surface.
On Wednesday, two watchdog groups released reports that delve into Bondi's time as a lobbyist and say that their findings raise concerns about Bondi's fitness to serve as head of the Department of Justice.
The first report was published by the group Public Citizen and looks at federal lobbying disclosures and Foreign Agents Registration Act reports filed by Bondi and Ballard Partners, the lobbying outlet where Bondi worked as a registered federal lobbyist for the past five years. Ballard Partners also employed Susie Wiles, Trump's pick for White House chief of staff.
The other report, from the group Accountable.US, also looks at Bondi's time at Ballard Partners and reports that at least five of Bondi's major lobbying clients have "faced DOJ fines, investigations, or related scrutiny that could pose serious conflicts if she is confirmed as AG." The Public Citizen report also details DOJ scrutiny on some of these companies.
Jon Golinger, the author of the Public Citizen report, wrote in a statement Wednesday that "the U.S. attorney general should be the American people's lawyer—not a lobbyist for big corporations and foreign governments."
"As they evaluate this nomination, we urge senators to carefully scrutinize Bondi's lobbying record and ask what she will do when the interests of her lobbying clients again clash with the Department of Justice she now wants to lead," he added.
According to Public Citizen's report, Bondi was registered to lobby the federal government on behalf of 30 different clients—a list that included the government of Qatar, large corporations, and government contractors—between 2019 and 2024.
The report details that her corporate clients have included the car service Uber; the large private prison company the Geo Group; the waste management company Republic Services; the e-commerce giant Amazon.com; and others, according to the report.
The watchdog found that lobbying reports filed in 2020 reveal that Bondi's firm was paid $120,000 that year by Uber to lobby federal offices on "issues related to sharing economy, surface transportation measures, foreign regulation of data management, regulatory relief, and legislative measures for Covid-19." Offices lobbied included the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of the Treasury, and the Small Business Administration.
Public Citizen reported that Bondi also retained two clients through 2024: the Florida Sheriffs Association and the Florida Sheriffs Risk Management Fund.
Both reports also detail that many of these companies have come under scrutiny from the agency that Bondi is tapped to lead.
Accountable.US highlights, for example, that in 2023 the DOJ imposed a $25 million civil penalty on Amazon to resolve allegations that its Alexa service illegally retained recordings of children's voices. Another former client, General Motors—who Bondi had as a client in 2020 and 2021—reached a settlement with the DOJ in 2023 to resolve the DOJ's determination that the company imposed a "discriminatory barrier" against lawful permanent residents in its hiring processes.
"Pam Bondi's career lobbying for corporate clients that had run-ins with the DOJ now poses potential conflicts of interest and serious questions whether she will put her personal interests ahead of the American people," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk in a statement Wednesday. "People are tired of this same, old insider game."
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Don’t Take Rideshare Companies at Their Word When It Comes to Worker Pay
A new study found that after the industry-backed Prop 22, rideshare drivers take home $7.12 per hour in median net hourly earnings before tips—a fraction of California’s $16 minimum wage.
Sep 02, 2024
The rise of Uber and Lyft to ubiquity over the last decade has been astonishing—over 3 billion trips were taken using the platforms in 2023. Throughout that meteoric expansion to nearly every inch of the globe, the companies have waved away concerns that the drivers keeping the platforms going are being underpaid for their labor.
Anecdotal cases of drivers working grueling hours for a pittance abound, but Uber and Lyft have been able to shrug them off through a combination of industry-funded studies and wage secrecy. However, a few independent analyses have managed to puncture the narrative that the gig economy pays well.
A new study from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center is one of the strongest examples of that so far. Researchers analyzed 52,370 trips by 1,088 drivers on six rideshare and delivery apps across five major metro areas and found that they earned well below the minimum wage in all five.
The gig companies are promoting Proposition 22-like policies in other states. Our research demonstrates clearly that such policies can be expected to leave drivers with sub-minimum earnings.
The study is particularly notable for the results it extracted about California, where in 2020 gig companies poured tens of millions into Proposition 22, legislation which allowed the industry to continue to classify their workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
The companies promised that exempting drivers and delivery workers would preserve the “flexibility” of gig work while ensuring that they would make over the minimum wage.
Four years later, that promise seems broken. Rideshare passenger drivers, the study found, take home $7.12 per hour in median net hourly earnings before tips—a fraction of California’s $16 minimum wage. When you account for the employee benefits and taxes that drivers have to pay for themselves, the number is even lower.
The lesson for other states and cities considering similar exceptions to labor law for gig companies? Don’t take rideshare companies at their word when it comes to worker pay.
I discussed this report with one of its authors, Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
First of all, congratulations on this major report! Can you tell me a little about how you collected this trip data? What kind of roadblocks do rideshare companies put up to knowing how much workers get paid?
The data comes from a third party app called Gridwise. Drivers use it to track mileage and earnings. We analyzed data for over 1,000 drivers and more than 50,000 trips over a two week period in January 2022 in five metro areas: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and Boston.
The data allowed us to analyze how much drivers earned per hour and shift across the main passenger and delivery services. I have looked at lots of screenshots from the company apps. The companies don’t make it easy for drivers to calculate their net earnings.
This study split apart passenger and delivery drivers—were there any notable differences in the pay for those distinct groups?
The biggest difference was the share of income that comes through tips. Tips account for a little more than half of the gross income of delivery drivers, but only 10% for passenger drivers. Overall we found that the typical passenger driver earned the equivalent of a $5.97 an hour wage before tips in California, and $7.63 an hour after tips.
Delivery drivers earned about $5 an hour in California without tips and $11.43 an hour with tips. In the three metro’s outside of California, non-tip income—base pay, incentives and bonuses—barely covered expenses. Drivers were essentially working for tips.
Can you explain a little more about how gig companies and this study calculate pay differently, especially when it comes to time between trips and expenses?
When the gig companies talk about how much drivers earn they usually put out figures for gross pay per hour and they don’t include the time a driver is waiting for a request or returning after dropping off a passenger or delivery. That is work time! It is an essential part of the job.
A recent study looked at data from 5.3 million San Francisco rideshare trips to see what drivers did between trips—they found that drivers were mostly heading back to hub areas where they had a greater chance to find a passenger or were cruising while waiting to get the next ride. They were working. When the companies talk about expenses, they don’t include costs associated with any of those miles.
The Gridwise date allows us to account for drivers’ full time and miles for each shift. For expenses, we use the IRS mileage rate for the time period under study of 58.5 cents a mile. This reflects the full cost of owning and operating a vehicle.
Proposition 22, the initiative put on the California ballot by the gig companies, set an initial mileage rate of only 30 cents a mile. The companies justify this by saying that most drivers work very few hours. What they don’t tell you is that most trips are done by drivers who work 20 hours a week or more and for whom gig driving accounts for the greatest use of their vehicle.
We also account for the fact that gig companies do not pay the employer side of payroll taxes or provide other mandatory benefits to drivers.
Your report mentions that concentration in the rideshare and delivery industries may be contributing to low pay, could you tease that out for me?
There are two major gig passenger companies, and four for food and grocery delivery. That gives them significant power to set pay in the industry. They are also able employ what UC Irvine law professor Veena Dubal calls “algorithmic discrimination.” They can see what trips or deliveries drivers have been willing to take for how much money in the past, and can individualize what they offer each driver for the same ride. They do the same in setting what they charge passengers.
How did pay in California compare to the other metro areas you analyzed?
The typical passenger driver earned around $3 less an hour in California than in the other three metros before tips. If we include tips it was around $3.50 less.
For delivery drivers it was the other way around. The typical delivery driver earned $4.50 more an hour in California than the other three metros before tips; $3 more with tips.
What does that say about the ways that Prop 22 affected the industry?
Proposition 22 was sold to voters as setting a higher minimum wage for drivers. In the case of passenger drivers, it had very little effect. Delivery drivers were much more likely to receive Proposition 22 payments and did have higher earnings than their counterparts outside of California. In both cases driver earnings were still well below the state minimum wage. The gig companies are promoting Proposition 22-like policies in other states. Our research demonstrates clearly that such policies can be expected to leave drivers with sub-minimum earnings.
The California Supreme Court recently upheld Prop 22 against a constitutional challenge—how should we expect that situation to evolve?
With the court’s recent decision upholding Proposition 22, we can expect gig companies to continue to pay subminimum wage in the state. The courts did leave open the possibility for the legislature to grant collective bargaining rights to gig workers. Massachusetts will be voting on a gig worker collective bargaining initiative this November. The results of that vote may shape what happens next in California.
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