Strike Threat Issued by Drivers Over Taxi GPS System Requirement

Taxi drivers are threatening to strike over the new tracking technology and credit card payment systems the Taxi & Limousine Commission is requiring them to install in their vehicles.

More than 100 drivers and medallion owners bundled up in scarves and ski caps for a rally in front of the Taxi & Limousine Commission headquarters on Rector Street yesterday, protesting the global positioning systems they say will infringe on their privacy rights. Holding up signs reading "Stop GPS" and "Ready to Strike," taxi drivers called the new technology an expensive "snake oil scam" that they will be forced to pay for.

"The thing the TLC cares least about is the most important part of the vehicle, the driver," a taxi driver, Abraham Mittleton, said. "At any given moment, the TLC will be able to use the GPS to play Big Brother."

While the Taxi & Limousine Commission says it will use the tracking devices only to reunite passengers with belongings left behind in taxis, drivers say their fear is that it will be used to prosecute them for speeding and other traffic violations.

"It's an industry where you don't have basic labor rights," the executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, Bhairavi Desai, said, referring to health insurance, which cab drivers must cover themselves because they are considered freelance workers. "Now even basic civil rights are being stripped away."

"Drivers are angry and ready to take action," Ms. Desai said. She said a strike is something that is being seriously discussed among the 7,000 city taxi drivers represented by the Taxi Workers Alliance.

Legislation requiring all taxis to be fitted with tracking devices, credit and debit card payment systems, and backseat passenger screens, was passed by the Taxi & Limousine Commission in 2004. While medallion owners will have to purchase the equipment, which is estimated to cost between $2,800 and $5,400 a car, drivers say they will end up carrying the financial burden through higher rental rates on taxis, as well as credit card processing fees and maintenance costs to deal with broken systems.

The technology "will benefit both drivers and customers and we look forward to them being fully implemented," the chairman of the Taxi & Limousine Commission, Matthew Daus, said in a statement.

The last time taxi drivers went on strike was for one day in 1998, in response to Mayor Giuliani's decision to increase fines for breaking traffic laws.