How taxi drivers fought with Yandex and Gettaxi

And why nothing came of this: the report of "Medusa"

On Sunday, February 15, a three -day All -Russian strike of taxi drivers ended. For three days, drivers refused to work with popular amgraduate services-Yandex.Taxi and Gettaxi. Users of these services did not notice any strike, and the scatter in assessments of the number of protesters is alarming: the capital's officials talk about “15-50 cars in Moscow”, transport activists report 50 thousand protesters throughout Russia. At the same time, the organizers promised that a million taxi drivers would refuse to work with online services (in total in Russia, according to gross calculations, one and a half million people work on a taxi). At the request of Medusa, journalist Vladimir Shvedov found out how the taxi drivers fought with Yandex and Gettaxi - and how drivers from the regions took part in the action.

“On February 14, during the strike, there was a record number of orders, a service [Yandex.Taxi”] found cars for 56.7 thousand trips per day, ”says Meduza, Plazir Mandzhikov, public relations director of Yandex.

"Strike? What other strike? The first time I hear. No, we certainly had nothing, ”Andrei K. is perplexed, who has been“ taxing ”for Kaluga for six years. In this city - just like in many others - in the nineties a taxi park collapsed. Since then, the market has been divided among themselves by private companies - in fact, information services that do not have their own cars, but connecting the driver and the client. Andrei did not hear about the strike, although he is also dissatisfied with the current situation. Most Andrei is upset by low tariffs. In the company Rush, for which he works, Andrei pays the dispatcher 27 rubles - only because he connects him with the passenger; And this is with the cost of a trip to a hundred rubles. At such an unfair price, Andrei blames the large federal company Saturn, which has recently arrived at the Kaluga market. Rush and I would be glad to raise prices, but Saturn carries people even cheaper, besides, he takes only seven rubles from the driver for the order. Already half of the taxi drivers ran from Rush to Saturn.

“Do you understand how it all works? - says Alexey Smirnov, deputy chairman of the Moscow Interregional Transport Trade Union. - Such a predatory company comes and simply destroys the local market. Here you are selling sausage, and then, for example, I come and sell your sausage is two times cheaper - at a loss. But I have enough money, but you have to pay for rent, sellers salary, for electricity yet. So you will be bent, finally. Here I will put the price even higher than you had, and everything will pay off perfectly. ”

On the night of the first day of the strike with the Kaluga company Rush, another trouble took place-someone set fire to her office. Alexey Smirnov from the transport trade union shows me on the phone screen a photograph of a blackened wall and a bursting window and assures that this could well make Saturn to “accelerate the process of capturing the market”.

Limiting the activities of companies that engage only in connecting the driver and passenger - the main requirement of the past strike. For Moscow, these are, first of all, the services of Yandex.Taxi and Gettaxi. In the regions, the main enemy of the taxi drivers are firms that position themselves as a taxi, but engage in the same mediation.

“These companies - Saturn, Maxim and the like - work as information services and nothing more,” the trade union leader Smirnov is outraged. - In transport legislation, there is such a concept as a taxi fleet - and is such as an individual entrepreneur. There is not a word about any dispatch or aggregators. They completely fall out of regulation by law, which they want, then create. The most cunning guys, there are no responsibilities for anything - no pre -trip, post -post medical examinations, inspections of technical conditions - come from the street, sign the agreements - and go. ”

Classic taxi are, according to Smirnov, they feel worse. They pay taxes, spend money on rental land; The price of transportation is inevitably higher. Legal taxi drivers now have practically no advantage over illegal. There are almost no special parking lots in the capital, often they are occupied by illegal immigrants. Drivers have almost forgotten about working in the staff - instead, they are issued as individual entrepreneurs and rent a car.

Requirements

The initiatives for the repainting of legal machines in yellow color cause special irritation in taxi drivers. This is an expensive procedure - covering with an imported yellow film will cost up to 50 thousand rubles. At the same time, such a “legal status” does not give a big advantage on the road.

“They say it to the TV that the allocated strips for taxi drivers are open. And what is the priority? Sign, not marking. So the fines come to the right. And why should I get these yellow numbers then? " - thinks taxi driver Arthur Akopyan. According to him, today the driver who does not refuse orders and is registered in aggregators earns about five thousand rubles a day. At the same time, he needs to pay a license for a year-18 thousand rubles, about 1.2 thousand per day-for renting a car, from 20 to 35% of the earned to give the mediator, plus the aggregator-10-15%. As a result, quite a bit remains.

The most important problem of the current taxi market, according to Alexei Smirnov, is security. Due to increased costs, the driver has to work 16 hours a day. The most professional taxi drivers are leaving, unskilled drivers take their place; The accident is already growing. “The legal taxi market in Moscow blooms and smells. However, his smell is unpleasant - this is the smell of illegal garbage. On which then the drivers and blood of passengers of illegal taxi smells and blood, ”they are echidable at the thematic forum of the trade union.

“In general, the action originated spontaneously. On forums, specialized sites, ”says Oleg Amosov, organizer of the action. - Well, then many cities connected: Astrakhan, Volgograd, Kurgan, Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod. But we will not go out into the streets. Not now time to escalate tension. Our president spoke out - the road to small business. We are standing on these principles. Life has risen in price with us, right? And the tariff did not change. What is this minimum wage when she is one and a half dollars? How can you work for 15 hours a day? I don’t want to live in cars, you know. So we want our brother taxi driver to find out that you can fight for his rights, so that there is a desire to act. ”

It is Amosov that belongs to the most optimistic assessments about the results of the strike - he believes that 50 thousand taxi drivers throughout Russia took part in it. However, not everyone shares his enthusiasm in the regions. Local organizers pretty much argued about the need to go outside (this issue seems to be relevant for all Russian protest movements).

“Operators profit from a large number of orders. And people are forced to work at these tariffs, they have mortgages, loans-they need to live. Now, if the taxi drivers gathered and would go out into the streets, maybe something would have changed. We would have seen us. And so-there is no community, ”explains Roman Solomatin, head of the Kaluga trade union.

There is really no unity among taxi drivers. And not only about the form of protests, but also about the very need for mass shares. So, the major union “Taxist” and his head Yaroslav Shcherbinin did not support the strike. “Well, yes, people have boiled,” explains Shcherbinin. -The requirements are fair, I agree. But the organization is ill -conceived, and in general it is all at the wrong time. Have you seen the exact numbers somewhere? There is no fall, there are no results. At the same time, our trade union is negotiating with the Department of Transport while the strikes are invented there. We need parking spaces (taxis that have not paid for the parking lot are fined in the same way as the rest of the cars). We are opposed to exorbitant fines, we advocate for the resolution of loans for cars. We work. It doesn’t happen - so that it came, and it turned out right away. Moreover, there was no action as such. ”

A aggregators of problems

In one, however, almost all trade unions converge-in relation to mobile aggregators. Now in Moscow about three million taxis orders are carried out monthly. According to Yandex, every eighth comes from their service. In one day - December 31, 2014 - more than 55 thousand passengers in Moscow used the Yandex.Taxi service. In 2011, when it was just launched, they did not take any commission from drivers. Now a company that does not have expenses for gasoline, parking, fines, cars, material assets and costs receives 8%, the organizer of the strike Oleg Amosov is complained by the organizer of the campaign.

Gettaxi take 15% of the cost of the order. Since December 1, 2014, the company canceled the minimum tariff, but, according to the assurances of its general director Vitaly Krylov, compensated the driver's difference-if the order is cheaper than 350 rubles, the loss was replenished due to longer trips. Trade Unions claim that now this compensation has been canceled.

“We do not propose to completely ban them! - commented by the trade union leader Alexei Smirnov. - We will force us to go to dialogue, to the next negotiations, to lead to a convenient price. If you want - lead the business. But in the legal field! Register, become normal market participants. Nobody argues with progress. You want progress, you want individual applications, but this does not cancel other requirements. Otherwise, we will have to insist on the prohibition of these offices. How can I lower tariffs so sharply? The crisis, the costs of the purchase, operation of cars have increased, maintenance costs, taxes there, deductions to the pension fund. ”

Taxi drivers say that they do not insist on a rise in the cost of travel: if intermediaries “die their appetites”, the tariffs will not rise. And they are not satisfied with the situation in which services that set their hard prices decide everything for them.

The Moscow Transport Department a couple of weeks before the strike held a meeting with the trade unions, Yandex.Taxi and Gettaxi, acting as an arbiter. The trade union leaders demanded that the services reduce the commission, return the compensation and coordinate tariffs with taxi drivers taking into account rising prices. But the meeting did not lead to anything. “We are a full -fledged client service, we have our own support service, a map of hot orders, we use new technologies. Yes, we have a 15%commission, we have not changed it from the moment of launch! This is not to say that we are just a board of ads, that we simply connect intermediaries. We teach drivers, check them for knowledge of the city. We did not receive specific complaints, and some statements that we canceled compensation for small orders - this is speculation. After the strike, our company offered a dialogue to representatives of trade unions, but so far there has been no response to our proposals. We are ready to discuss all issues. Our tasks include so that the market of the Vyuza is clean, it is large, and there will be enough space for all legal services on it, ”Gettaxi press service told Medusa.

A serious change in tariffs, about which striking taxi drivers talk so much in May 2014, when Yandex.Taxi introduced the minimum order price of 199 rubles in ten minutes instead of fixed 400-500 in the first half an hour. The Yandex press service objects: such prices are not at all unprofitable, since the taxi parks acquired a new segment of short trips, which previously belonged to the “bombs”. The number of orders after introduction, according to the company, increased - immediately by 30%. But the cost of orders still did not satisfy many.

“Of course, the aggregators should work thoroughly,” said Yaroslav Shcherbinin, head of the taxi driver’s trade union. - After all, they don’t care which tariff, zero costs. And it is necessary that everyone understands what and how much it costs, and why. Only Uber does not want to work with us - it must definitely be banned until it's too late. The point of negotiations if they come to you in order to destroy the industry and bring all the money to another country? ”

Uber is an American company that created a mobile application for calling a taxi or private traders; App allows you to track the movement of a taxi, pay for a trip with a credit card. The main advantage of this service is very low tariffs. In Moscow, Uber is still collecting only 2-3% of orders, but it goes victoriously around the world-this is the second in the cost of a startup, estimated at $ 41 billion.

This is not to say that Uber was welcomed everywhere. Just as in Russia, the application almost everywhere meets the resistance from the taxi services-due to too democratic conditions. Now Uber is suing the authorities in Hamburg and Berlin; In Vancouver, his activities were prohibited, and in South Korea the founder of the Travis Calanik service was even condemned in absentia to two years in prison - in this country it is impossible to use cars taken as a taxi.

"These who are striking, I am an enemy for them"

“In European countries, a taxi driver is taught specially - like a bus or trolleybus. A taxi driver is a professional type of activity, with all consequences. And we have the words “taxi driver” even in the list of the Ministry of Labor. A taxi driver as such does not exist! We have accepted the most controversial taxi development scheme - American, with sales of permits, when it does not matter who is driving. So, I will say: it is the American type of taxi that is recognized as the most disgusting in the world. The largest scope for crimes, ”says the trade union leader Smirnov.

“For the province, in general, the topic with aggregators is irrelevant. The main problem here is crime, ”says Vladimir Domrachev, chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Taxilator Trade Union. - Different fraudsters of the telephone breed, the “bombs” do not drive how. And the law that would allow us to use force is not. It’s time to apply it. Huge turns, crime penetrated into all levels of power! You know, whom I am talking about - this is a deputy Lysakov.

Every second representative of the trade unions refers to the deputy of the State Duma and the head of the organization of motorists “Freedom of choice” Vyacheslav Lysakov. Say, all reasonable and correct bills are blocked by them, all constructive proposals are deviated. Vyacheslav Lysakov is the president of the National Taxi Council structure, which includes companies such as Saturn. “I have not seen these strikes! Are they virtual? Where did your editor see them? - Lysakov boils. Tell your editor that an event is when there are people. But these attacks are just nonsense. Maybe they just got sick and decided to sit at home. At one time, I myself personally organized 10 protests and I know what it is. ”

Vyacheslav Lysakov adheres to the point of view directly opposite to the requirements of taxi drivers; He believes that the more people can legally work according to a simplified scheme, the better. The deputy believes that the protesting trade unions even “did not get acquainted with the bill under development”, and all problems with the aggregators concern only legal registration. “These are those who are striking, I am an enemy for them. Only now they did not even read the bill, which is preparing for the second reading. In the first edition, all concepts are already spelled out. And according to the aggregators too! Tariffs can be any, contractual. You can’t regulate them. Let the costs reduce. Everyone can work! We have one and a half million taxi drivers in our country, and only a third have received a license now, ”says Lysakov.

Only the beginning

On the inhabitants of Moscow, the past strike did not affect the fact. Four thousand taxi drivers who took part in the shares (according to trade unions) are only 10% of the taxi drivers of the capital. Large taxi are not supported by the action; Yandex and Get.taxi said that the services were registered with the usual number of drivers. The Department of Transport issued a press release in which he agreed to oversee new negotiations and ensure equal conditions for all market participants: “The Department of Transport sees for itself the main goal in creating a civilized and competitive taxi transportation market in the capital. Our priority is the interests of citizens who should be taken into account by all participants. ”

However, the organizers of the strike do not think at all that it ended in nothing. According to Alexei Smirnov, the action was aimed more at the professional environment: “We didn’t want to be worried! In principle, the main task is completed, thanks to your brother, the journalist. We made the problem for discussion; Notified colleagues. But if the point does not move off the dead, then on March 16 we will hold a new promotions. And no longer quiet. ”

Vladimir Shvedov

Moscow