![](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125752161/630576451.jpg)
System requirements Lab runs millions of PC requirements tests on over 6,000 games a month. UberStrike- Free Online Game.
. With Uber's high-profile IPO looming, eligible drivers stand to get a piece of the stock offering. 5.4 million shares, or about 3 percent of the total offering, will be reserved for U.S. Drivers. Still, relations between the ride-hailing company and its drivers are contentious, and a strike is planned for May 8.The top executives, board members and early investors in Uber Technologies stand to reap billions of dollars off of their stakes in the ride-hail company when it goes public later this week. Ousted founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, who still owns 8.6 percent of Uber, is expected to make nearly $9 billion on his stake, while early investor Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com - the world's richest man. Eligible Uber drivers - the lifeblood of the company - won't see anywhere near the same kinds of returns, although some of them will have the option to buy Uber shares when they start trading between an expected $44 and $50 apiece this week.Here is how the IPO math works for drivers: About one-quarter, or 1.1 million, of Uber's 3.9 million drivers around the world who have completed at least 2,500 trips before April 7, including at least one in 2019, and are in good standing with the company, will be eligible for a one-time 'driver appreciation reward.'
The bonuses, based on a driver's number of completed rides, range from $100 for drivers who have completed 2,500 trips to $40,000 for drivers who have completed 40,000 trips. Trending News.Uber has long had a contentious relationship with its drivers, who are classified as independent contractors rather than employees. To protest what they say are long hours and low pay. Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hail service drivers who are members of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance argue that Uber executives and insiders are getting rich off of drivers' hard work while they struggle to make ends meet.' When you compare early investors and executives and what they stand to make, that obviously contrasts significantly with the drivers, even though they are the hearts and lungs of the Uber economy,' observed Wedbush stock analyst Daniel Ives.
Average hourly wages of $9.21 after drivers' costsUber drivers earn money on a dual per mile and per minute formula, while Uber collects service and booking fees that vary by geography each time a trip is taken. One study from the left-learning Economic Policy Institute estimates that Uber drivers earn the equivalent of $9.21 in hourly wages after taking into account Uber's fees plus drivers' vehicle and other expenses.Other studies estimate they earn more. Gridwise, a software company that helps drivers maximize their earnings across ride-hail apps, estimates Uber drivers earn $18.65 hourly before expenses.
In Chicago, for example, where a driver's average reported earnings per hour are $18.82, the average profit per hour is $15.03, according to Gridwise. Among drivers' demands are that Uber keep a smaller percentage of each fare. Its ride-sharing 'take rate' in 2018 was 21 percent, varying from 12 percent to 24 percent, depending on the geographic region, according to the company's SEC filing, and it's expected to rise to 22.3 percent later in 2019, according to Wedbush's Ives.In the decade since its inception, it has yet to turn a profit - and might not ever make money. In 2018, the company lost more than $3 billion, the equivalent, on average, of losing 58 cents per ride last year. Uber prepares for $100 billion IPO'Wall Street investors are telling Uber and Lyft to cut down on driver income, stop incentives, and go faster to driverless cars,' New York Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said in a press release. 'Uber and Lyft wrote in their S-1 filings that they think they pay drivers too much already. With the IPO, Uber's corporate owners are set to make billions, all while drivers are left in poverty and go bankrupt.'
Uber says drivers' status as independent contractors affords them flexibility they otherwise wouldn't have - a perk whose value is not lost on drivers. The flip side is that they must provide their own vehicles, and are responsible for associated costs including gas, car insurance and miscellaneous expenses.The company also acknowledges in its IPO filing that its 'business would be adversely affected if drivers were classified as employees instead of independent contractors.' The disappointing Lyft experienceWhile Uber drivers will have an opportunity - at IPO time - to own a part of the company they work for, there's no guarantee that it will be a good investment.
Uber competitor Lyft, which debuted on the Nasdaq in March, has seen its shares drop more than 30 percent since its IPO.' The same thing was done for the Lyft IPO and there wasn't much of a benefit for drivers because the stock was trading below IPO price,' said Kathleen Smith, principal and manager of IPO ETFs at Renaissance Capital, a provider of institutional research and IPO exchange-traded funds.
Uber CEO on lessons from Arizona self-driving car accidentEither way, Uber must find some common ground with its drivers if it hopes to scale the company to meet the estimated $80 billion in market value that some on Wall Street are giving it. Uber would do well to reward its drivers who could ditch the platform altogether for rivals like Lyft or Juno, if working conditions become too unfavorable.' There is some benefit to employee loyalty, but when given a bonus like this it might work the opposite way, if the stock goes down, it may cause grousing among drivers,' Smith said.It's clear the IPO will produce some big winners, and the share program is an effort by Uber to ingratiate itself to drivers.' The stock options speak to the balancing act that Uber is going to have over the coming years,' Ives said.
'Drivers are the fuel in the engine and they have to be careful with company take rates and profitability on rides because there is a certain line in the sand where drivers could leave or go work for another competitor. Uber needs to, from a PR perspective, handle this such that drivers feel like they are a part of this company, and them getting shares in the IPO speaks to that.'
First published on May 6, 2019 / 5:55 PM© 2019 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty ImagesMore on.If you take an Uber or Lyft on Wednesday in several major U.S. Cities, you’ll be crossing a picket line in the eyes of many drivers. Thousands of workers for ride-hail apps are expected to strike ahead of Uber’s highly anticipated initial public offering, which is scheduled for Friday. The mobility company is expected to go public with a valuation topping $90 billion, which would be the public offering on record and would make millionaires out of many early Uber employees. Drivers for Uber, on the other hand, earn what the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute is $9.21 on average after expenses. Just last month in Los Angeles, Uber drivers per mile by 25 percent, slashing the rate from 80 cents per mile to 60 cents. And so they’re striking.Will you be able to tell?
Uber, after all, has a decentralized contract workforce, and it’s certainly possible most won’t strike—and even if lots of them do, the company may not share how big the impact is. Still, if you live in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, New York, or San Francisco and plan to take an Uber or Lyft (whose drivers are striking too), you should have a contingency plan to get around on Wednesday. It may take much longer than usual to hail a driver and if the number of drivers is way below demand, surge-pricing could go into effect. Then again, Uber could also suspend surges, an action that would give riders the base fare while obscuring any effects of the strike. Expect for this strike to be bigger than earlier, single-city demonstrations. For one thing, unlike, this time the striking gig workforce is asking that riders abstain from using ride-share apps too.
![Uberstrike px 10 Uberstrike px 10](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125752161/160529544.jpg)
Airports in the Washington, D.C., area that they should plan to take public transit or a taxi in case there aren’t enough drivers working Wednesday. In Los Angeles, drivers to picket at the airport. And in the Bay Area, the public transit authority even, “Worried about the May 8 rideshare strike? Take BART to/from the airport instead.” If you open your Lyft or Uber app on Wednesday in a major city and the closest available driver is 10 minutes away, that’s a pretty good sign the strike is having an effect. Drivers are demanding that Uber pay them a living wage and provide health care, pointing to the fact that despite being unprofitable, the company was able to pay its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, last year. Drivers are also demanding transparency into how much they’re earning from fares and tips, a calculation that currently changes as Uber sees fit, and a clear policy for when drivers are deactivated from the app. They also want to be able to organize without fear of retaliation and are demanding the formation of an independent drivers’ organization so they can make collective demands to improve working conditions.
(Some workers who have been driving for a long time will be able to with bonuses Uber is handing out, based on the number of rides completed.). Because Uber drivers aren’t employees—at least until a court says otherwise—strikers won’t have to call out sick.
Uber and Lyft’s whole pitch is that drivers can work whenever they want, so in a sense, the strike will simply be an instance of a bunch of drivers not working because they don’t want to. Still, the collective action could highlight the fragility of Uber’s business model. If the vast majority of their drivers in the participating cities opt not to work, it could cut into the productivity of the company just as painfully as a strike by full-time software developers. And if the strike is big, it will be painful.
Drivers in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, and San Francisco are all planning 12-hour strikes. In New York, where drivers are already required to receive a, they are planning a two-hour strike in the morning. Drivers in Sao Paulo and London are striking, too. Uber admitted in filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission to take the company public that in 2018, rides from L.A., New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, London, and Sao Paulo. And 15 percent of its bookings happen from airport trips.
All of which means: If drivers organize at airports and decide to continue organizing like this in major cities, Uber really will have a big problem at exactly the moment in which it must impress investors. Uber may have expected this. The company also admitted in its IPO paperwork that it has been slashing driver payouts. “As we aim to reduce driver incentives to improve our financial performance, we expect driver dissatisfaction will generally increase,” Uber’s filing reads. No kidding.Nor is this the company’s first brush with labor organizing from workers behind the wheel.
In 2017, before Uber founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick was ousted, led hundreds of thousands of users to delete the app off their phone. The hashtag emerged amid accusations that Uber had planned to cash in on striking taxi drivers in New York who were demonstrating in protest of the Trump administration’s refugee travel ban. That was a very public black eye, which, when combined ugly stories about the company’s frat-boy corporate culture, helped usher Kalanick’s out the door.
Now, as Uber becomes a publicly traded tech company, it appears driver strikes, this time from its own workforce, are once again present at the end of an era. In its next chapter, Uber will need figure out how to make its millions-strong driver workforce much happier—or hurry up with its so-far-troubled plans to ditch them in favor of self-driving cars.
If not, the riders in liberal urban centers upon which so many of its business depends may paint the app as toxic once again, as they did two years ago. And winning back those drivers won’t come cheap.
![](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125752161/630576451.jpg)