Cab drivers balk at Port of Seattle's new airport contract
Last month, the Port of Seattle chose a new taxi company to serve Sea-Tac Airport. East Side For Hire won the exclusive contract.
The change happened quietly in the middle of last month. But the Port Commission meeting yesterday was anything but quiet.
Drivers and union members pushed back. KUOW’s Kim Malcolm spoke with reporter Carolyn Adolph.
Tell us about the reaction to this new contract.
People were there to protest, and indeed they protested more than five years ago, when Yellow Cab won this contract away from STITA.
This time is different. Last time the company didn't matter too much. STITA drivers migrated to Yellow and life went on.
But Yellow drivers are union drivers. East Side For Hire drivers are owner-operators.
So the unions were out in force. Lots of people with signs and lots of leaders, including the head of the M. L. King Labor Council, Nicole Grant.
What did the drivers say?
One driver said it simplest: When the elephants fight, the grass gets hurt.
This spring the port let Uber and Lyft pick up Sea-Tac passengers for a one-year pilot program. Those are non-union shops and they are picking up passengers that might otherwise have taken cabs.
That's more elephants, well beyond STITA or Yellow, vying for this contract – and a time when the Ubers and Lyfts of this world are thoroughly disrupting the taxi business in the rest of town.
The airport taxi drivers fear for their incomes already. And then came the reveal that the East Side for Hire contract could deliver as much as $36 million in profit for the port. That's around double what the Yellow contract was delivering – and the drivers know that the money is going to come from them.
Some drivers said they’re worried about how they will support their families if they have to double their payments to the port for the privilege of getting passengers from the airport.
What was the port's reaction to all this?
The port says it gave the taxi companies a chance to set their bids after they experienced the Uber effect – but they didn't. And now the drivers are complaining.
It's also important to note there was trouble with the Yellow contract – auditors found that Yellow failed to honor everything in its contract with the Port – and that it cost the port valuable income from the taxi service.
Now what happens?
Now we will see what becomes of that request. The contract is set to transfer over on Oct. 1.
Photo: “Sea-Tac Airport” by Ping Li on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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Kim Malcolm
Afternoon News Host
Kim is the local news host of KUOW's All Things Considered, airing from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. weekdays. Kim covers breaking and developing daily news, both local and regional, as part of NPR's afternoon drive time programming.
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Katherine Banwell
Announcer
Katherine is the local host on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Prior to coming to KUOW, she worked at KPLU (now KNKX) as a fill-in host on All Things Considered and host of Weekend Morning Edition. She's also the voice of many telephone on-hold messages for businesses across the country and loves to act in her spare time.
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Gil Aegerter
Gil edits feature pieces and helps guide staff reporters through their stories. He previously served as interim digital director and online managing editor at KUOW. Before that he spent seven years with NBCNews.com, where he was variously a senior editor, editor-producer and features editor. He also worked 25 years as a newspaper editor in Anchorage, Alaska, San Diego, Wilmington, N.C., and Seattle. He also was a freelance researcher for NBC Olympics for the Games in Atlanta; Sydney, Australia; Salt Lake City; Athens; and Torino, Italy. He is a graduate of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, with a degree in photojournalism.
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