Taxi drivers packed into an Arlington County office Wednesday, demanding changes to local laws they said restrict cabbies’ rights.
About 100 drivers staged the lunchtime “sit-in” to ask Arlington’s transportation director to change the county’s taxi code, saying their letters, phone calls and emails had been ignored for too long.
“He didn’t respond. That’s why we came here today — to beg him to talk,” taxi driver Fassil Berhe said.
Drivers said the two-year-old taxi code lets their bosses fire them at will, doesn’t let drivers move between companies and doesn’t give drivers complete rights to the taxis they buy for about $30,000 each.
“We don’t have any security,” Berhe said. “The code is working for just the companies.”
The demonstration caught the county by surprise, officials said.
“They didn’t make an appointment or call,” county spokeswoman Diana Sun said. “We’re always open to people having meetings. This is not the best way to do business.”
County officials hastily scheduled a meeting around 2 p.m., during which Arlington Trasnportation Director Dennis Leach explained how the code had been written and offered to correspond with the drivers soon. Drivers responded with passionate pleas for swift change, displaying a “Justice for Taxi Drivers” sign in the meeting room.
“We can probably lay out a process where their concerns can be heard,” Bill O’Connor, Arlington director of transportation and the environment, told The Washington Examiner.
Leach insisted that all stakeholders would need to be consulted before any changes are made to the law, including taxi companies, customers and other government agencies.
Rick Vogel, general manager for Enviro Taxi Cab, who was unaware of the sit-in, said changing the ordinance to meet drivers’ demands would end up harming the public. He said drivers want to switch companies or drive independently so that they can pay lower weekly fees, but that the weekly fees pay for dispatch service.
“The lower the dues, the less the service to the public,” he said.
But cab drivers said they wanted “democratic rights” and “due process.”
“Instead somebody takes you by the ear and says ‘Get the hell out of here,'” said driver Berhane Michael, who said he was fired unfairly by his company. He told county officials: “Consider us as human beings.”
