Is Toronto a partner in modern slavery?
City collected $15,000,000 from Uber drivers while it renamed streets
Debt bondage/bonded labour. The world’s most widespread form of slavery. People trapped in poverty borrow money and are forced to work to pay off the debt, losing control over both their employment conditions and the debt.”
While posting a positive review on the website Booking.com, I was surprised to see this text pop up on my screen:
“We recognize that modern slavery in all its forms, including slavery, human trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, descent-based slavery, servitude, child slavery, and forced and early marriage, is a global issue and an increasing problem…Our commitment is based on internationally recognized standards and principles, including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”
At first, Booking.com’s statement seemed incongruent, nothing a happy traveller expects on such a site. But on second thought, given the amount of human trafficking that takes place in hotels and motels and the degree to which debt bondage and forced labour are the reality in transportation industries, it occurred to me that Booking.com is on the right track, working to stay ahead of the scourge of “modern slavery in all its forms.”
Which brings me to…the City of Toronto. In 2023, Toronto was working frantically to change street and park names for fear that retaining a namesake such as Henry Dundas would taint the city with shadows of slavery.
The same year, Toronto collected more than $15 million in trip fees from Uber drivers earning poverty wages in an Algorithmic Ghetto. That makes Toronto a partner in the ridesharing business, a partner whose revenues rise when Uber is busy and fall when it is not.
This is a rare set-up, perhaps unique. I have worked at the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen government agency conflicted in such a way, earning millions of dollars in commissions from a corporation it regulates. The temptation to kowtow to the corporation must be almost irresistible.
Is it a stretch to say that Toronto the Good is actively profiting from a form of modern slavery?
George Wedge, President of the Rideshare Drivers Association of Ontario has no qualms about describing Toronto as a business partner profiting from debt bondage, a form of modern slavery.
Photo: RDAO
“Toronto is a full corporate partner with Uber, and they’re very bad actors,” Wedge told Taxi News.
“There’s no question. It’s not just debt servitude, but more like human trafficking. Imagine being an immigrant youth or any other person who’s been offered an opportunity for a better life, only later to find out they’re indebted to the person who offered it to them.
“Then, whether it’s true or not, workers feel that if they were to just simply walk away, which they could do at any time, they would be destitute and even worse off than they were before.
“That’s 100 per cent true of 85 per cent of Uber drivers.”
Wedge describes how both the reality and the feeling of indebtedness traps Uber drivers:
“Once you get in, you can’t get out because you don’t have any immediate income to solve the problem of making your car payments, or being able to feed your family the little bit you have been able to with your Uber earnings.”
Toronto is in the home stretch of its review of the Vehicle for Hire industry, and one surprising theme that came up during the stakeholder consultations is the idea that rideshare driving has become a form of slavery. Not the state-supported legal slavery that allowed white people to own black people in the southern United States before 1865; but rather a version of debt bondage and servitude, described as “being forced into inescapable debt.”
Speakers at the in-person consultations; callers on the teleconferences; individuals I interviewed in person and by phone touched repeatedly on the idea that they feel like slaves.
“My paid-for car got wrecked and I had to rent a vehicle to keep driving,” one rideshare driver told me. “Now, some days I do not even make enough money to pay the rental fees. I don’t know how to get out of this.”
Another Uber driver borrowed money from family members to purchase a vehicle, assuming he would gross at least his average $100 per day. An accident put his new car in the shop for a month and a half and left him in a giant debt hole from which he cannot see a way out.
“They have all of the signs of a trafficker: when you’re with them, they’re very nice,” Wedge points out. “Then they send you off to do your stuff, but at the end of the day, you can’t show any legitimate ties to them.
“You have no record of ever being with them; for example, drivers have no proof of their own commercial insurance driving record.” Other drivers, Wedge says, have been attempting to locate their on-line work statements for months without success: “It’s as though they never existed.”
This makes Toronto’s financial partnership with the ridesharing industry even more appalling. It’s noble to worry about the slavery that occurred 150 years ago; hopefully Council will have as much concern for the drivers in debt bondage today.
“My paid-for car got wrecked and I had to rent a vehicle to keep driving. Now, some days I do not even make enough money to pay the rental fees. I don’t know how to get out of this.”
–UBER DRIVER
