May Day private hire drivers strike

Morgan Rhys Powell reports from Manchester on the May 1st strike of private hire drivers

May Day saw a coordinated strike wave as drivers from a range of private hire platforms logged off for 24 hours, with strikes in London, Cardiff, Stoke-on-Trent, Bristol and Manchester, as well as in the US, Nigeria and Uruguay. The strikes stemmed from widespread knowledge in the workforce that pay is plummeting. Uber describe the profit that they seek to extract from drivers’ labour as a “service fee” or “commission”, used “to keep the app running and improving”. This, they say, should be around 25% of what the customer pays for a ride. But, of course, it has to be much more than this in order for the firm to maintain its profitability. 

Drivers are not shown how much customers are charged for rides and are discouraged from discussing costs with customers, but conversations happen, and through these drivers discover major “commissions” being taken by Uber. As Mohammed, a striking driver in Manchester, said:

I have, one time, one customer in Liverpool. I picked up the job, and that customer was talking with her friend. She said: ‘I have too much expense and Uber charged me £25.’ I asked the customer: ‘How much is Uber charging you?’ She said like £25, but Uber gave me £11 and charged the customer £25! Uber is making more money than drivers, which is not fair. It’s very expensive – petrol, house expenses, prices going up and up, and Uber is not giving us a good fare.

The roots of the strike are in action undertaken by Addison Lee workers in London in September 2024, which won the removal of mandatory CCTV cameras in cars used to surveil workers. Following this, the emboldened drivers planned a more far-reaching action focused on pay, calling a strike covering all private hire platforms for February 14th – amongst the busiest days of the year in terms of customer demand. The IWGB-led demonstration in London was relatively small, but drivers in Birmingham staged an impressive convoy blocking roads around the city’s airport. Elsewhere, local driver organisations contacted the IWGB with an eye to coordinating future plans.

Conscious of the need for an extended campaign, IWGB members set May Day as the date for the next strike and the union’s machinery set to work promoting it. 

The anatomy of the strike in Manchester

The IWGB has always drawn support from socialists from beyond the workforces that they organise, going back to 2013 when student activists supported the university cleaners’ 3 Cosas campaign. This is one of the ways in which a comparatively small union has exercised an outsized influence. Deploying this tactic, IWGB officials contacted socialist activists in multiple cities and asked them, in turn, to contact local drivers. In Manchester, members of rs21 and the Alliance for Workers Liberty took this up. 

As part of the Valentine’s Day strike, the IWGB had created huge WhatsApp chats of drivers from around Britain, not all of whom were members of the union. Four drivers in those chats identified themselves as working in Greater Manchester and being ready to strike, and socialist activists contacted them, creating a WhatsApp chat that other drivers could be added to. From conversations with these four initial drivers, plans were agreed for a demonstration during rush hour to complement the strike, gathering at a city centre location with free parking and aiming to hold a short meeting to begin building local organisation.

Socialists designed and printed leaflets based on the initial conversations with the four drivers and took these to places where we knew drivers gathered to wait for jobs. Drivers told us of no end of issues in their working conditions, alongside their problems with pay. They joined the WhatsApp chat and added their colleagues. By April 30th, a day before the strike, the chat had grown from four drivers to over 600, all pledging to strike. It was clear that the workforce was ready for action.

We printed placards, made a banner and contacted journalists – putting them in touch with drivers – in advance of the demonstration. Some might see this as outside agitation, but it is a role that the revolutionary left has undertaken many times before: providing support, facilitation, and infrastructure which workers can use in their own particular struggles. In undertaking acts like this – being careful not to confuse solidarity with substituting for the organising that workers must do themselves – we build a wider base for radical, empowering politics.

On May Day itself, only twenty drivers attended the planned demonstration, with around 15 supporters mobilised through Manchester’s left networks. Other drivers stayed home, spent time with their families, and enjoyed a rare day off. On the one hand, the decision to demonstrate during school pickup time, at a central location – and not one where drivers wait for orders – was a mistake. On the other, asking drivers to do something – to come to a particular place, out of their way – helped identify a section of the workforce that is most willing to act. From this, a committee of workers has formed and is making plans for the future, whilst socialists continue to provide a bridge between them and the movement beyond Manchester.