Featured photo by Ethan Schmidt
Story by Ethan Schmidt
Roughly 90 Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers, members of the newly-formed Tennessee Drivers Union, marched down Nashville’s Broadway Sept. 13 as part of their series of strikes that began Aug. 30.
A cacophony of classic rock and country music covers blared over car horns and the tweets of traffic officers’ whistles. The smells of barbecue, chicken and cigarette smoke did their best to mask the putrid sewer stench rising from the ground below. Skyscrapers towered over the party below.
Nashville’s Broadway strip burst with its usual brash and vibrant energy Friday until 5 p.m., when workers marched down the sidewalk of 3rd Avenue North into the bustling strip. The workers introduced a new kind of noise to the strip — one of unity, disruption and empowerment, directed at the local government and rideshare companies to improve the working conditions for the drivers who keep the city’s tourism industry running. The TDU represents a coalition of rideshare and taxi drivers in Tennessee, as well as a couple of bordering states.
The union made national headlines when it launched its first strike at the Nashville International Airport on Aug. 30.
“As Uber/Lyft keep taking more of the payouts from rides, we are finding it increasingly difficult to survive,” the union said in an Aug. 30 Instagram post. “We work 12-hour days, 7 days a week, relying on sub-minimum contract work to make ends meet. If we don’t come together as people striving for dignity then we will continue to suffer and be robbed by these two giants.”
The TDU articulated four overarching demands in their initial post: the expansion of the airport’s rideshare lot, including clean bathrooms, a curfew on electric scooter usage after 9 p.m., a reduction in the number of drivers and a pay raise based on the duration and distance of each ride.
Since most of these demands can only be addressed by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, the union called on Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, Nashville Metropolitan Council members, the Metro Nashville Airport Authority, and the Transportation Licensing Commission “to come to the table.”
Yet, the Aug. 30 strike ended only a few hours later, with none of their demands met.
Rather than carrying out a prolonged action, like the ongoing AT&T strike, the TDU opted to organize a temporary strike timed for expected moments of intense demand, like the start of Labor Day weekend.
Kovan Ali, co-president of the TDU and founder of Daily Transportation, a luxury ride service company, said Friday that the strategy is directly inspired from the short strikes used by rideshare worker coalitions in other states.
“We’re not doing it for any different purposes,” Ali said as union members met at the Glencliff United Methodist Church for their second strike. “We’re doing this for the exact same purposes and same deals. Hopefully, this is not gonna be the last one in the South. Hopefully, everybody else will start following in our footsteps to get to where we need to get.”
Not as many drivers were able or willing to follow in their union’s footsteps Friday.
“I am sorry,” Interim TDU Co-President Arkangelo Wilson said at the start of the meeting in the church. “Uh, I am a little bit disappointed here because this is not the number I was expecting.”
Ali had more hopeful news to deliver to the present drivers: despite O’Connell’s office declining to comment on the TDU’s demands at a media roundtable at 10 a.m. that morning, the union later received an offer to meet for a town hall with 10 council members and the mayor’s legislative director, Dave Rosenberg.
Nonetheless, the roughly 90 drivers present voted to strike, and after deliberating how to account for the expected bouts of rain into their plans, the drivers carpooled to the Nissan Stadium parking lot. From there, the striking drivers marched across the Woodland Street bridge to the front steps of the Nashville Metropolitan Courthouse.
Along the way, John Crawford, a striker sporting a new Tesla Cybertruck, demonstrated his support by sticking two U.S. flags in the bed of his electric truck and displaying an electronic sign on the back, which displayed the main chant echoed throughout the hour-and-a-half protest: “No Drivers, No Tennessee.”
After a brief rally on the front steps of the courthouse, the drivers marched down the sidewalk of 3rd Ave North and into the Broadway strip, though some made the adventurous decision to hop in the back of the Cybertruck and wave signs as Crawford drove them to the strip, matching the marchers’ pace. There, the drivers took two laps around both sides of the strip, turning to the opposite side of the street at the 3rd and 5th Avenue intersections.
As they walked and yelled their chants around the strip’s patrons, they received a wide variety of responses: some fist bumps, some cheers and some jeers.
After making their second lap, the strikers returned to the Public Square outside the courthouse and their leaders concluded the strike.
The TDU will meet with the 10 council members and Rosenberg on Sept. 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the Glencliff United Methodist Church.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly said the number of drivers at the strike was 50, when the correct number was 90.
Ethan Schmidt is a reporter for MTSU Sidelines.
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