Sixth New York City cab driver dies of suicide after struggling financially

[Judi Lynn]

Source: NBC News

A Yemeni immigrant is the sixth driver to die of suicide in the past eight months, according to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
by Phil McCausland / Jun.16.2018 / 1:59 PM ET



Abdul Saleh, 59, a city cab driver, was found dead
in his Brooklyn home on Fri., June 5, 2018. Saleh
committed suicide. He is the sixth cabbie to commit
suicide so far in 2018. Courtesy New York Daily News


"[Saleh] was 59 years old and he should have been planning for retirement and rest after 30 years of serving the public and the city, but instead he was exhausted by the cruelty of ending each 12-hour workday with less in his pocket than the day before," the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) said in a statement.

NYTWA blames the suicides on the drivers having “their livelihoods devastated by a business model that fails to recognize the basic humanity of the workers who keep our city moving.”

Saleh worked as a cabbie for 30 years and often worked 12-hour workdays, but he often fell short on his the lease payments on his medallion and taxi, his driving partner Qamar Chaudhary told the New York Post.

He and Chaudhary split the workday, driving either day or night shifts, but Saleh would often come home as little as $60 short on the payment. But Chaudhary told the Post that Saleh was $300 short for the latest payment.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sixth-new-york-city-cab-driver-dies-suicide-after-struggling-n883886

[BigmanPigman]

1. To tell you the truth I am surprised

more people haven't been doing this as a result of this economy. Rising prices and stagnant wages is hurting the majority of Americans and this is reality. High rents/housing prices and health care are taking its toll on people. This is not a strong economy. And now tariff wars, etc it looks like it will continue to worsen.

[brush]

26. Add Uber's business model for taxi driver's steeply falling income.

This will continue to happened unless laws are passed so that taxi rates aren't so steeply undercut by Uber and Lyft.

[shraby]

2. Something really really stinks in New York and it isn't rotten eggs.

It's who controls the medallion system for the taxis.
Sounds like it needs and good overhaul.

[7962]

6. Yes. Do away with the rip off "medallions" that you go broke trying to pay for.

Pay a taxi tax period. You shouldn't go broke for the right to drive a damn cab.
If I lived in NYC & needed to drive for a living I'd cheat that damn system if I could figure out how.

[FakeNoose]

18. I think that's what Uber is trying to do

...but it's wrecking the jobs for the old-style medallion cabdrivers who operate like independent contractors. The cabdrivers have to pay for the license and cab lease even when they're not making any money themselves. That's how the medallion owners (like Michael Cohen) stay rich when all these drivers are starving. So Uber isn't much better, but they'll put the medallion owners out of business and they'll become the next regime.

[brooklynite]

34. Actually, this was a medallion owner...

[FakeNoose]

35. Yes

They're losing tons of business to the Ubers and other ride-sharing companies.

[brush]

27. It's Uber and Lfyt steeply undercutting taxi rates.

Something has to be done to equalize things.

[christx30]

36. Or maybe the old business model

doesn’t work in the digital age. Taxis are no longer a monopoly. They are expensive and unreliable. They’ll take you around in circles to run up the fare. That’s if they show up at all. Customers are voting with their feet, and taxis are losing. Taxis can either change the way they do business, raise their standards, offer something that Uber can’t, or go the way of blacksmiths and the town cryer.

[brush]

37. Long hauling of course has to stop, but the Uber model isn't working...

that well for drivers either. And Uber has yet to turn a profit and they keep failing to perfect driverless cars.

It still to be seen how things work out in that business.

[saidsimplesimon]

3. This hurts.

Old fashion me, I depend on public and cab transportation when needed.

[Mopar151]

4. And the medallion is leased from?

A Russian gangster like Michael Cohen's FIL. Or someone with a similar business model. Uber's biz model targets the medallion owners, but it really hits the cabbies who lease their medallion and/or their cab.

[Calista241]

5. Uber and Lyft have also cut into taxi cab profit margins. n/t.

[left-of-center2012]

8. It's called innovation

I wonder if buggy whip makers committed suicide when the auto industry came along?

[Calista241]

17. I'm not criticizing Uber and Lyft's business model.

Just acknowledging that their business has encroached on traditional taxi driver's income.

[left-of-center2012]

19. I wonder how typewriters are doing these days?

Since computers and word processors came along?

[Igel]

23. There's empathy.

[JI7]

28. +

[christx30]

9. The market is there. Someone's going to jump on it.

There are a lot of people that don't like taxis, for one reason or another. They'll find another way around town. I'm ok with Uber and Lyft. I've been stranded by cabs. One time in 30 degree, rainy weather. I called the taxi company like 8 times begging for a cab, until my cell phone died. Ended up walking 9 miles home. That was 6 years ago, and I haven't used a cab since then. I hate them.

[yuiyoshida]

12. I know the feeling...

Once while returning back to SFO from another airport outside of California, I tried to take a cab home from San Francisco international Airport. The driver, basically drove me all the fuck over the place trying to run the meter up.. and it cost me nearly 50 dollars to get home. I called and complained to YELLOW CAB and they said, maybe he got lost... ...OMFG!

[AdamGG]

30. That happened to me the one time i visited SF

Took BART from my friend's in Berkeley and then we caught a cab to take us to Haight-Ashbury. I didn't know the city well, but knew we were getting jerked around when I realized the driver was doing laps around the Presidio.

[appalachiablue]

13. Competitors Uber & Lyft are definitely causing pressure on Taxi drivers.

I've read several news accounts about this, how NYC cabbies in particular are working exhausting 14-18 hours a day to find fares to pay the bills. Some Uber drivers are also putting in very long hours to find passengers to meet costs.

CNN, "Suicide Rate: US Saw 25% Increase Since 1999, CDC Says," June 7, 2018
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/suicide-rate-us-saw-25percent-increase-since-1999-cdc-says/ar-AAylNWS

[Ligyron]

7. Feudal capitalism at its finest.

[TheFrenchRazor]

32. i think feudalism looks positively socialist compared to the way our economy is going. nt

[yuiyoshida]

10. I have to wonder....

How much a company like UBER has taken patrons away from Cab Companies? How much have Cab Drivers lost to independents like Uber?

[left-of-center2012]

14. In New Mexico ...

Uber put out of business the only cab company in Santa Fe
and one of two here in Albuquerque.

My Uber fare home from the grocery store is $6 and change; a cab fare runs me about $11 and change.
I'm 72, disabled, on Social Security. Which do you think I choose?

[yuiyoshida]

16. i HEAR YA..infact

This NEXT Saturday I am going to see the SAN FRANCSCO GIANTS play the San Diego Padres..and my friend got us two FREE uBER passes... worth 20 dollars each..guess how we are going to AT&T park??

[left-of-center2012]

11. Six suicides out of 51,398 cab drivers ?

“As of March 14, 2014, there were 51,398 individuals licensed to drive medallion taxicabs” in NYC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City

Any and all suicides are bad. I know. My father committed suicide dealing with end stage of a terminal disease.
But I wonder, statistically, how does 6 out of 51,398 compare to other professions?

[Quemado]

29. CDC stats

For rates of suicide per 100,000 population, by sex, and ranked overall by Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) group — 17 states, 2012, go to this link: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm?s_cid=mm6525a1_w#suggestedcitation

In 2012, in 17 states, the rate was 22.3 per 100,000 population, for transportation workers: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm?s_cid=mm6525a1_w#suggestedcitation

In 2016, in NY, the rate was 8.1 per 100,000 total population: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm

[Honeycombe8]

15. I think Uber & Lyft & such has impacted the cab cos. a lot.

The cab cos. also have rules that Uber & Lyft don't have, I THINK.

I wonder if he couldn't get another job? I guess he was too old for someone else to hire and pay decently.

Who was he leasing from? The lease payments were too high?

Did his wife work? It really takes two incomes these days. I was a working single woman. I was able to make it only because things were cheaper when I started out. I was getting paid more, when things got increasingly more expensive. Still, I would have been so much better off financially, if I'd had a two-income family. (Assuming I didn't marry someone with a gambling problem or whatever.)

This is so sad. This is a reason why I think all the talk of retraining workers in recessions is trash talk. These older workers...they know how to do only one thing, and even if they learned something else, not many companies would hire them.

[appalachiablue]

21. Uber, Lift have 'lighter regulations,' try to exploit workers as indy contractors.

But the City Attorney of San Francisco recently said "no" and “If your company is valued at $62 billion, you can afford to give your workers health care.”

"UBER, LYFT: San Francisco Throws Down Gauntlet, Subpoena Following CA Legal Decision," Think Progress, May 31, '18

Uber and Lyft are in the regulators’ cross hairs again — this time, in their own backyard.
The City Attorney of San Francisco, Dennis Herrera, issued a subpoena to Uber and Lyft on Tuesday to figure out whether or not they classify their drivers as employees or contractors.
Ride-sharing companies like Uber have long argued that, because they function as an intermediary “technology company” connecting the passenger and the driver, they can classify their drivers as independent contractors — meaning they get to avoid giving them traditional employee benefits.

“[San Francisco’s laws] guarantee employees basic humane benefits like sick leave, health care, and paid parental leave. We are not going to turn a blind eye if companies in San Francisco deny workers their pay and benefits,” Herrera said in a statement. “If your company is valued at $62 billion, you can afford to give your workers health care.”
In April, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled to limit businesses from classifying workers as “independent contractors,” which limits their access to key worker protections like minimum wage, health care and rest breaks.

The risk that workers who should be treated as employees may be improperly classified as independent contractors is significant in light of the potentially substantial economic incentives that a business may have,” the court ruled.
“Such incentives include the unfair competitive advantage the business may obtain over competitors that properly classify similar workers as employees.” Classifying drivers as contractors also means they are at the mercy of algorithms, which push fares (and drivers’ earnings) down for passenger convenience.

In March, an analysis by MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) found that Uber and Lyft drivers made a median profit of $8.55 — before taxes. In other words, more than half were earning less than their state’s minimum wage, and one in ten were actually losing money. Uber has also previously admitted to underpaying its drivers in New York by approximately $45 million, and made a $20 million settlement to drivers in January 2017 for making false promises about earnings and car financing. But major markets are finally cracking down on Uber... Read More, https://thinkprogress.org/san-francisco-uber-lyft-drivers-independent-contractors-7fdd838563a5/

[Honeycombe8]

25. A lot of info there.

I worked as a contract worker for a year and a half. At one agency, I was an employee. At the other, I was classified as an independent contractor.

It was scary being an independent contractor. BUT, as it turns out, I got more $ that way, because I could deduct my expenses...car travel to the job, parking, any other expenses related to the jobs I took.

The down side is that FICA & taxes aren't taken out, so you have to pay those at income tax time.

I wonder if the cab drivers are independent contractors or employees? I thought they were contractors, but not sure.

[Jedi Guy]

24. Yeah, it's brutal out there for older workers.

My dad wound up having to change jobs in his late 50s, and damn near everywhere he applied he was told he was "overqualified." While this was somewhat true since he has a master's in economics, the subtext was "you're too old."

I can't imagine how hard it'd be for an older worker who doesn't have a degree or a specialized skill. But on the other side, I see where the employers are coming from, too. Why hire and train someone who's likely gonna retire in a few years? Especially if you also have younger applicants?

[JI7]

20. Seems like they need to change some laws concerning the medallions

With regard to its cost.

With things like uber they shouldn't cost as much.

I don't know much about how it works but just that they are not as valuable .

[JI7]

22. Can taxi drivers become uber/lyft etc drivers ?

A new car will probably cost less than the payments for the medallions.

And since they will probably be better at it than most people since they have experience driving around.

[dembotoz]

31. Did he work for Michael Cohen's cab company?

[malthaussen]

33. "Die of suicide" is an odd way to put it...

... a marked lack of actors in that clause. Maybe it's just me.

-- Mal