Taxi drivers walk off the job

By Dan Hilborn
Published April 23, 2005


It may take longer to get a taxi to your front door after a group of disgruntled Bonny's Taxi drivers walked off the job to protest a new $10 'lease fee' imposed by the company.

Hamid Bahrami, spokesperson for the taxi driver's action committee, said 97 of Bonny's drivers have refused to work since Monday morning and he's concerned that the company may be using drivers without permits to keep up with the workload.

"Right now, there are drivers with no permits driving taxis, which is not safe for the people," Bahrami said. "We want people to know to make sure that their driver has a Burnaby chauffeur permit."

But Satvinder Thind, supervisor of the largest taxi company in the city, said the allegations are unfounded and only six or seven of the company's 114 vehicles are sitting idle because of the job action.

"It's business as usual," Thind said Thursday morning. "We have drivers who are driving and maybe only 25 of them who don't want to. Everything is in operation."

And he said the allegation that drivers without permits are operating taxis in Burnaby is simply not true.

"No, they are lying," Thind said. "You can check. I have drivers on and I have owners on. They are all permitted and they are all licensed.

"Why would I risk my business licence?" Thind asked.

The dispute, which came to a head on Monday morning, centres around an 8.87 per cent rate increase approved for Lower Mainland taxi firms earlier this spring and how that money will be dispersed between the drivers and owners.

Bahrami claims that the company imposed a $10 hike in the drivers' per-shift lease rate, raising their costs to $65 per shift. And he said the fee hike is particularly unfair at this time because drivers must also pay for any gasoline used during their shifts and the price of gas has recently jumped about 40 per cent to more than $1 per litre.

Bahrami said drivers would be amenable to several possible solutions to the impasse. The company could either keep the lease rate where it is; pay the drivers on a commission schedule, similar to that used by Yellow Taxi in Vancouver; or have the firm pay for WCB, EI and other benefits in return for an increase to the lease rate.

But Mahil said the drivers' committee is not being honest about what changed.

He said the company lease rate has risen only $2 - from $83 to $85 - and anyone who pays less is already benefiting from a side deal with their own vehicle's owner.

"This is a group of self-employed lease drivers and they have the option to either drive or not to drive. It's their prerogative," Mahil said.

He said drivers have to accept the fact that the new rates charged to customers are intended to cover rising costs in all aspects of the business and not just rising fuel costs for the drivers.

"These people got the impression that the meter increase is purely for gasoline prices. I don't know who gave them that information. The meter increase is for gas, insurance and skyrocketing mechanical repairs."

Mahil said owners must also cover the licence fee paid to city hall when they put a new car on the road.

Mahil also said the the drivers are exaggerating their own numbers. He said Bonny's has approximately 250 drivers, of which 80 per cent are owner-operators who do not pay the disputed lease fees.

"What the company has been asking for is totally, totally reasonable," Mahil said. "I know what it's like to drive. I've driven as an owner-operator myself, so I know both aspects."