A taxing pandemic for taxi drivers

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This article was published 07/12/2020 (1929 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While many scrub their hands and strap on face masks to avoid hospitals, cab drivers line up in front of St. Boniface Hospital and Health Sciences Centre hoping to catch a fare.

The cabs seem to move with an understood decorum, conceding passengers to the taxi at the front of the line before inching up like a row of train cars to fill the space.

“This is only the one place that you get some business out of,” said cab driver Ron Yablonsky over the wailing of an ambulance on Tache Avenue.

The COVID-19 pandemic has decimated his bottom line.

“It’s hard,” he said. “We’ve lost at least 60-70 per cent of our wage.”

Yablonsky said he’s driven a taxi for 32 years, and this is the worst he’s ever experienced. Part of the problem is he drives at night, when things are really slow, he said.

“Day drivers are hit hard too, but they get people going to doctor’s appointments and that. After 10 o’clock it’s done.” – Duffy’s Taxi driver Ron Yablonsky

“Day drivers are hit hard too, but they get people going to doctor’s appointments and that. After 10 o’clock it’s done,” said the Duffy’s Taxi driver.

Things are tough right now, he said, and cabbies deserve a little more recognition.

“We are an essential service,” said Yablonsky. “We’re here for a lot of low-income people, the elderly and that kind of people. And they depend on cab service.”

One of those clients is Cadham Provincial Laboratory, said Unicity general manager Chanpreet Singh. The lab tests samples for COVID-19 on a daily basis. And as lab workers, hospital staff and patients climb in and out of their cabs, many drivers say they’re afraid they’ll contract the virus.

Drivers wear masks and require passengers to do the same, but the cramped interior makes proper social distancing impossible. To compensate, some say they disinfect their cars eight to nine times every shift.

“It’s not safe, but we have no choice,” said Unicity Taxi driver Malkeet Makkar. “It’s our duty. We are also front-liners.”

In conversations with drivers, they repeatedly stressed their role as front-line and essential workers.

“It’s really hard for our taxi drivers to survive in this situation and even the government’s not helping. We are front-line workers,” said Unicity driver Manpreet Bassi.

“We are essential workers,” said Guramit Sidhu. “It is COVID time, and we are essential workers.”

But the industry faces a greater threat than a lack of recognition. The dollars and cents aren’t adding up.

“I’m making way, way less than minimum wage,” said Yablonsky.

Singh confirmed overall business is down up to 70 per cent from pre-pandemic numbers. What that means for drivers can be dire.

Of 13 drivers spoken to, several reported making under $50 per shift, and only one said he’d surpassed the $100 mark. Considering the standard shift for a taxi driver is 12 hours, even earning fares of $100 would average out to $8.33 per hour, well under the province’s $11.90 minimum wage.

One Unicity driver, Samuel Gezae, said on a few occasions, he’s done even worse.

“Sometimes we pay to the owners from our pocket,” he said.

What he meant is when drivers use vehicles they do not own, as is often the case, they pay around $75-90 each shift to the owner of the vehicle. This is generally a flat fee, so if non-owners fail to collect enough to pay it after buying gas and deducting a small dispatch fee for every fare, they end up on the hook for the difference.

“Sometimes we pay to the owners from our pocket.” – Unicity driver Samuel Gezae

And those who own their vehicles face a different financial burden — insurance costs. Owners say they’re paying a base price of $11,000 per year to insure their cars as vehicles for hire.

Simarjeet Brar owns his cab but still estimates his daily profit at around $50-60.

“There’s no future for this business,” he said. “Because the city and MPI, they are all trying to squeeze this company out.”

The city needs to waive their dispatch fees during the pandemic, he said, and someone needs to step up to help drivers.

As it is, the Unicity Taxi general manager said 50 per cent of the company’s drivers are already off the road. Some people have decided to sell their cars to make ends meet, he said, but plummeting profits mean demand to buy cabs is low.

“They’re selling the cars for cheap — really dirt cheap,” said Singh.

Duffy’s driver Heer Hardeep said he’s almost stretched as thin as he can handle.

“Maybe one month, I find another job,” he said, before saying that doing so would be very hard for him.

But he said the main problem for him right now is something even more basic.

“The city takes everything from us,” he said. “They take fees for issue the licence, but they never, ever think: where do we go for the washroom?”

“They’re selling the cars for cheap– really dirt cheap.” – Unicity general manager Chanpreet Singh

A host of other drivers also complained about a lack of access to public washrooms. They said they would have to drive across town to stop either at home or at their company buildings, adding to gas costs chipping away at already meagre earnings.

But Simarjeet Brar said for some this is a compounding problem.

“Some people have diabetes, and those people they can’t control,” he said. Bladder dysfunction commonly affects those with diabetes.

But while these issues chase some cab drivers out of the industry, others say they have no choice but to keep working. What other jobs could they do, they asked. Or they’ve invested too much in a vehicle to sell at a time when the return on selling is so low.

For Yablonsky, it’s hard to envision a different life, he said.

“I’m 52. I’ve been at this business all my life pretty much,” he said. “It’s a lifestyle. It always has been. My father did it for 35 years… it was just something that I grew into.”

city.desk@freepress.mb.ca