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Investing inIndependent ContractWork: TheSignificance ofSchedule Controlfor Taxi Drivers
Nicholas Occhiuto1
Abstract
New York City ‘‘yellow’’ taxi drivers work as independent contractors. Like
many independent contract workers, taxi drivers engage in economically
precarious work—or work that is economically uncertain, unpredictable,
and risky. This article explores how taxi drivers make sense of the economic
risks they face each workday. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic data,
it finds that taxi drivers made sense of their work by expressing a sense
of control over their work schedule, which is significant given the self-
conceptions that drivers bring with them to this particular work arrange-
ment. As a result, this sense of schedule control serves as a mechanism for
worker investment in the structure of independent contract work.
Keywords
independent contract work, schedule control, worker subjectivity,
precarious work
Work and Occupations
2017, Vol. 44(3) 268–295
! The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0730888417697231
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1Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Corresponding Author:
Nicholas Occhiuto, Department of Sociology, Yale University, 493 College Street, New
Haven, CT 06511-8933, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Like many independent contract workers, New York City ‘‘yellow’’taxicab drivers engage in economically precarious work—or work thatis economically uncertain, unpredictable, and risky.1 Yet, as independ-ent contractors, who lease their taxis, drivers are also able to controltheir work schedule. This article asks: how does the ability to controlone’s work generate worker investment in the structure of independentcontract work that produces uncertain (and often low) economicreturns? I begin with an excerpt, taken from my 20-month ethnographyof taxicab drivers in New York City.
Vic was an ex-marine who had been leasing his taxi for almost4 years. ‘‘This job can get really frustrating,’’ he said. One of the mostfrustrating features of taxi driving was the prospect of losing money onthe job. ‘‘Sometimes, you come into work, and you don’t even makemoney for the lease,’’ he said. Later in our conversation, however, Vicplaced the economic risks associated with taxi driving in the context ofhis future aspirations. ‘‘Without an education it’s tough,’’ he said,reflecting on his prospects in the labor market, ‘‘and this job doeshave its benefits.’’ Vic was a student in night school, pursuing adegree in finance. One of the principle benefits, he claimed, was theability to control his work schedule. He said:
This job is flexible. I can cut my hours short without asking, or when I
have midterms or finals, I can take the day off entirely. At other low
paying jobs, like at a restaurant, for example, you have to be there
from ‘‘this-time-to-that-time.’’ They’re just not as flexible. So, this job
helps me with school.
For the rest of our conversation, Vic and I spoke alternatively of boththe advantages and disadvantages of taxi driving. ‘‘The only thing thatgets me through this,’’ he said, ‘‘is that I know that it will get better oneday.’’ Vic explained that he was in his last semester of school and wouldsearch for a better job after the semester was completed.
This article will show that both the economic risks and the ability tocontrol one’s work schedule are the direct result of the lease—a non-standard work arrangement that predominates in the contemporaryyellow taxicab industry. Drawing on the work of Burawoy (1979),I will argue that the ability to control one’s work schedule generatesactive investment of taxi drivers in the structure of the lease workarrangement, thereby legitimating the broader structures of work.Rather than generating consent, however, which is defined by long-term commitment, this article will argue that the lease work
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arrangement generates effort, which is defined by short-term investmentand high rates of attrition (Sallaz, 2015). This article will expand uponthis body of work by focusing on the self-conceptions that drivers bringwith them to this work arrangement, which has been previously under-explored. I argue that those self-conceptions, which are often tied tofuture aspirations and social relations beyond the workplace, matter forhow individuals make sense of independent contract work.
The article continues as follows. First, I bring together the literaturepertaining to independent contract work, the mechanisms which gener-ate worker investment in work, and the importance of schedule controlfor workers. Second, I show the historical change in the work arrange-ment of taxi drivers, whereby taxi drivers emerge as independentcontract workers. Third, there is a discussion of data and methods.Fourth, the empirical section examines how workers experience an eco-nomically precarious form of work and explores how schedule controlserves as a mechanism to generate investment in the structure of inde-pendent contract work. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the argu-ment and explores the implications of these findings.
The Rise of Independent Contract Work
The study of the taxi industry in the United States is not new.Economists have used the taxi industry to analyze prices (Friedman,1962; Lagos, 2003; Orr, 1969), the effects of regulation on marketsupply (Buchholz, 2016; Cetin & Eryigit, 2013; Frechette, Lizzeri, &Salz, 2016; Rogoff, 1980; Shreiber, 1973), the labor supply decisionsof cab drivers (Ashenfelter, Doran, & Schaller, 2010; Camerer,Babcock, Loewenstein, & Thaler, 1997; Crawford & Meng, 2011;Farber, 2005, 2008, 2015), the moral hazard associated with the leasingmarket (Jackson & Schneider, 2011; Schneider, 2010), the impact ofdefault tip suggestions on tip amounts (Haggag & Paci, 2014), andthe factors that contribute to driver productivity (Cramer & Krueger,2016; Haggag, McManus, & Paci, 2017). Sociologists have examined therelationship between the taxi drivers and their fare (Toiskallio, 2000;Vidich, 1976), both in terms of establishing trust (Gambetta & Hammil,2005; Henslin, 1968) as well as the challenge of soliciting gratuities(Davis, 1959). Ethnographers have inquired into the occupationalculture of taxi drivers (Henslin, 1967a; Psathas & Henslin, 1966), thedifficulty that drivers face in accessing a restroom while working(Noren, 2010), the relationship between immigrant drivers and Blackfares (Anderson, 2011), and the development of occupational niches
270 Work and Occupations 44(3)
among immigrant communities (Mitra, 2003a, 2003b, 2009). Taxidrivers have been extolled as religious innovators (Smith & Bender,2004), magicians (Henslin, 1967b), and cowboys (Hoffmann, 2006).Finally, scholars have examined the multifaceted relationship betweentaxi drivers and labor unions (Gaus, 2014; Hodges, 2007; Islam, 2007;Mathew, 2008; Nash, 1968) as well as the health risks associated withthe job (Gany, Gill, Ahmed, Acharya, & Leng, 2013).
For the purposes of this article, taxi driving provides an opportunityto bring together three sets of literature: (a) on the increase in independ-ent contract work, (b) on the mechanisms which generate investment inwork, and (c) on the importance of schedule control for workers.
Independent Contract Work
Scholars have noted that there has been an increase in the use of non-standard work arrangements (Kalleberg, 2000). In fact, recent researchsuggests that all of the net employment growth in the U.S. economyfrom 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative workarrangements (Katz & Krueger, 2016). Indeed, scholars have estimatedthat as many as one-third of all workers are now nonstandard workers(Hollister, 2011). This increase has been described as a rise of ‘‘contin-gent work’’ (Polivka & Nardone, 1989), ‘‘alternative work’’ (Cohany,1998), ‘‘temporary,’’ ‘‘part-time,’’ or ‘‘independent contract work’’(Kalleberg, 2000). In their seminal study on the matter, Kalleberg,Reskin, and Hudson (2000) defined nonstandard work in terms ofwhat it is not—namely, regular, full-time employment which takesplace at the employer’s place of business, under the employer’s control,and with the mutual expectation of continued employment.
Among the various forms of nonstandard work, New York Cityyellow taxi drivers work as independent contractors. The U.S.Supreme Court has indicated that there is no single rule or test fordetermining whether an individual is an employee or independent con-tractor for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA; U.S.Department of Labor, 2014). Due to numerous complaints from work-ers alleging misclassification, however, in July 2015, the Department ofLabor’s Wage and Hour Division issued additional guidance regardingthe application of the standards for determining who is an employeeunder the FLSA (Weil, 2015). In that guidance, the administrator statedthat in order to make the determination whether a worker is anemployee or an independent contractor, courts have used a multifactor-ial ‘‘economic realities’’ test. The factors include the following: (a) the
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extent to which the work performed is an integral part of the employer’sbusiness; (b) the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss depending onhis or her managerial skill; (c) the extent of the relative investments ofthe employer and the worker; (d) whether the work performed requiresspecial skills and initiative; (e) the permanency of the relationship;and (f) the degree of control exercised or retained by the employer.2
Scholars have estimated that there are now more than 10 millionindividuals working as independent contractors in the United States(Kalleberg, 2011).
Much of the research on nonstandard work arrangements has shownthat nonstandard work is substandard, compared with standard workarrangements (Broschak, Davis-Blake, & Block, 2008; Osnowitz, &Henson, 2016). Indeed, there is a general agreement among scholarsthat nonstandard work generally increases a worker’s exposure to‘‘bad jobs,’’ which are characterized by low earnings, the lack ofhealth insurance and pension benefits, and the absence of formal jobladders (Findlay, Warhurst, Keep, & Lloyd, 2017; Kalleberg, 2000;McGovern, Smeaton, & Hill, 2004). Moreover, scholars have arguedthat nonstandard work is more likely to be economically precariouswork—or work that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky—due to theabsorption of economic risk by workers (Kalleberg, 2011; Vallas &Prener, 2012). Importantly, Fligstein and Shin (2004) have shown thatlow-skilled and uneducated men are considerably more vulnerable toboth bad jobs and precarious work.
How do workers make sense of these new conditions of work?Although there has been a great deal of research documenting the char-acteristic changes in these work arrangements, much less analytic atten-tion has been paid to how workers themselves experience and respond tothe new managerial regimes (Fligstein & Shin, 2004; Vallas, 2006). I seekto address these gaps in our understanding by placing the experiences oftaxi drivers with independent contract work at the center of investigation.
Investing in Work
Sociologists have examined how experiences of autonomy have gener-ated worker investment in work. Michael Burawoy (1979), for example,showed how the experience of control over machines and their outputgenerated consent for workers on the factory floor. He argued that thegame of ‘‘making out’’ allowed workers to construe themselves asskilled laborers, which was significant in the context of the hierarchicalrelationship between workers and management.
272 Work and Occupations 44(3)
Beyond the factory floor, scholars have shown how the experience ofcontrol in customer interactions generates consent for interactive serviceworkers. Unlike the dyadic relationship between managers and workerson the factory floor, interactive service work has a tripartite relationshipamong workers, managers, and customers (Leidner, 1993; Lopez, 2010).Scholars have argued that ‘‘tipping games’’ allowed workers to construethemselves as entrepreneurs (Sallaz, 2002, 2009), as well as skilled, stra-tegic, powerful, and manipulative actors (Sherman, 2007), which wassignificant in the context of the status hierarchy of the service triangle.
More recently, Jeffery Sallaz (2015) has shown that for call centerworkers, discretion during phone calls generates effort rather than con-sent. He contends that by decoupling the ‘‘learning game’’ from thereward structures (i.e., wage increases, job security, seniority withinan internal labor market, status within a stable peer group), callcenter workers have no motivation for sustained participation. As aresult, he argues, this experience of control elicits short-term investment,with high rates of attrition, rather than long-term commitment.
These studies, however, did not examine how the experience of con-trol over one’s work schedule may have served as a mechanism to gen-erate investment from workers in their work. As scholars have noted,having autonomy over one’s work schedule is conceptually distinct fromhaving control over work tasks (Kalleberg, 2011). This form of controlis distinct in that it does not derive its significance from the statushierarchies on the shop floor or contained in the ‘‘service triangle.’’Instead, the significance of this form of autonomy derives from theself-conceptions that individuals bring with them to this form ofwork, which are often tied to personal aspirations and social relationsbeyond the workplace. In this way, this article expands on the literatureon consent by adding a new mechanism for generating investment inwork, which is particularly important given the rise of independentcontract work in the contemporary economy.
Schedule Control
According to the Department of Labor, one of the key factors in deter-mining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor isthe degree of control exercised by the employee (Weil, 2015). One aspectof job control that has gained considerable attention in recent years isschedule control. Sometimes referred to as flexibility, schedule control isdefined as an employees’ sense of latitude or control regarding thetiming of their work, as well as the number of hours they work
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(Kelly, Moen, & Tranby, 2011). Research suggests that employees whoreport control over their work schedules also report less work–familyconflict (Moen, Kelly, & Huang, 2008), greater work–life integration(Kelly et al., 2011; Sweet, Pitt-Catsouphes, & Boone James, 2016;Tausig & Fenwick, 2001), improved physical and mental health(Moen, Kelly, & Hill, 2011), higher job satisfaction (Glass & Finley,2002; Lyness, Gornick, Stone, & Grotto, 2012), and reduced employeeturnover (Moen et al., 2011).
Research also suggests that low-wage workers rarely have controlover their work schedules (Williams & Connell, 2010).3 In fact, sev-eral studies have shown that in many low-wage jobs, the days andtimes of an employee’s work schedule are posted each week, whichmay vary from week to week, and for which an employee has littleinput (Halpin, 2015; Williams, 2005; Williams & Connell, 2010). As aresult, these variable schedules make it difficult to plan activities out-side of the job. Indeed, as Christine Williams (2005) argues, ‘‘It isexactly the kind of schedule that is incompatible with doing anythingelse’’ (p. 66).
This article will argue that the structure of independent contractwork both produces economically precarious work for taxi drivers, byshifting economic risks onto drivers, as well as provides a mechanismthat serves as the basis for worker investment in economically precar-ious work—the ability to control one’s work schedule. It argues that thisability to control one’s work schedule derives significance from the self-conceptions that drivers bring to this particular form of work, which areoften related to their personal aspirations or family considerations.Before I can address how drivers make sense of this work arrangement,however, I must first describe the changes in the work arrangements thattaxi drivers have experienced over the past 40 years.
Changes in the Work Arrangementof Taxi Drivers
Historically, driving a New York City yellow taxicab would never havebeen characterized as a ‘‘standard job.’’ Indeed, a drivers’ work hasnever been performed in an employer’s place of business, and israrely, if ever, under an employer’s control. As a result, taxi drivershave always experienced a degree of autonomy over their work tasks(Hodges, 2007). For example, drivers have always had decision latitudewith respect to where to pick-up passengers, as well as how to best tointeract with those passengers and navigate the city.
274 Work and Occupations 44(3)
Yet, taxi driving would not always have been characterized as eco-nomically precarious work or as a particularly bad job. To elaborate,from 1924 until 1979, New York City yellow taxicab drivers worked asemployees of taxicab companies (Shreiber, 1973). Under this workarrangement, taxi drivers worked 5 days a week; 9-hours a day; receiveda minimum wage; a commission from daily fares; tips from passengers;and did not have to pay for gasoline (Stevens, 1991). By 1964, taxicabcompanies began to appropriate 5 cents out of every ride to cover com-prehensive medical insurance for drivers (Shreiber, 1973). By 1966, com-panies provided a pension plan for drivers over the age of 65 who hadprovided 25 years of service (Perlmutter, 1966). By 1969, drivers hadnegotiated for paid vacation and a life insurance policy, which wasmade payable in the event of accidental death as a result of employment(Shreiber, 1973).
Indeed, under the commission system, the economic risks associatedwith daily variability in market demand were borne by the taxicabcompanies. To address that risk, companies monitored the economicperformance of drivers and incentivized drivers by implementing asystem of rewards and punishments (Stevens, 1991). For example, com-panies rewarded productive drivers by giving them bonus pay, thechoice of days off, or a desirable steady car. Conversely, they punishedless productive drivers by dispatching them in nondesirable cars, notdispatching them at all, or terminating them altogether (Stevens, 1991).
These conditions made driving appear attractive to drivers. In fact, inhis survey of taxi drivers, Allen Stevens (1991) found that 89% of taxidrivers who had experience with the commission work agreementviewed it favorably. While some of the drivers interviewed spoke ofthe benefits in terms of the security of a paycheck, others spoke ofemployee benefits and paid vacations.
Despite the favorable perception from drivers, however, the workarrangement in the industry began to shift in the 1970s. On February19, 1971, New York City council passed a bill to create the Taxi andLimousine Commission (TLC) (Vidich, 1976). The TLC was in chargeof supervising licensing, setting safety standards, and determining cabdesign (Rogoff, 1980). Its primary objective, however, was to regulatethe burgeoning non-medallion industry (Rogoff, 1980).4 It is in thiseffort that the TLC would make one of the most significant regulatorydecisions in the history of the taxi industry, which would radically trans-form the work arrangement of taxi drivers (Hodges, 2007).
On February 14, 1979, the TLC voted in favor of allowing taxicabowners to lease their vehicles to individual drivers (Herman, 1979).
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It was a move that many argued would stabilize the turbulent industry(Mathew, 2008). Although at the time the chairman of the TLC empha-sized that leasing was voluntary (Herman, 1979), by the mid-1980s, the‘‘commission garages’’ began to vanish and leasing all but took overthe industry. A new standard for work arrangements had emerged inthe taxi industry (Mathew, 2008).
As a result of this shift, drivers emerged as independent contractors(Stevens, 1991). Because drivers were no longer employees, medallionowners were no longer required to pay drivers a minimum wage orprovide benefits, such as health insurance or pension benefits(Mathew, 2008). Instead, drivers paid a fixed sum (or lease rate) tothe medallion owner in order to operate the taxicab for a 12-hourperiod of time and would keep all the earning of the meter, afterpaying for gasoline (Stevens, 1991).5
Importantly, under this new work arrangement, taxi drivers exclu-sively absorbed the risk of daily market variability (Mathew, 2008).That is, irrespective of the number of fares that a driver may pick-upon a given day, medallion owners were now assured a steady revenuestream with the payment of the lease. As a result, medallion owners nolonger needed to monitor the economic performance of taxi drivers nordid they need a system of rewards or punishments to ensure perform-ance.6 Instead, owners only needed to make sure that there were driversavailable and willing to pay the lease.
Taxi drivers, by contrast, were no longer assured of any income. Asthe labor leader, Bhairavi Desai, said of taxi driving, ‘‘[it] is one of thefew professions in the world where not only are you not guaranteed anincome, but you might end a long twelve-hour workday losing themoney you started with’’ (Mathew, 2008, p. 48). As a result, taxi drivingbecame an economically precarious form of work and acquired many ofthe characteristics attributed to a bad job.
An awareness of these historical transformations is critical for under-standing how contemporary drivers make sense of their work. I contendthat despite the fact that independent contract work creates the condi-tions of economically precarious work, that same work arrangementalso provides critical freedoms for drivers—namely, the ability tomake decisions regarding their work schedule. Although drivers maynot always be able to practice these freedoms in the ways they imagine,they identify it as critical for their commitment to the work arrange-ment. I argue that this perceived freedom to control one’s work scheduleserves the basis for worker investment in the structure of independentcontract work.
276 Work and Occupations 44(3)
Data and Methods
This article draws from ethnographic data that I collected while work-ing as a New York City yellow taxicab driver. Over 20 months, I notonly worked as a driver but also conducted 29 semistructured and open-ended interviews with drivers, as well as 25 interviews with others in thetaxi industry—including medallion owners, brokers, union leaders,industry regulators, as well as city and state officials. Because this articlefocuses on the experiences of drivers, I draw heavily from those inter-views and use the ethnographic data to supplement drivers’ narratives.Moreover, because the focus of this article is on drivers who work asindependent contractors, I focus specifically on those yellow taxicabdrivers who lease their taxi, as opposed to those who own their ownmedallion. A 2005 report on the status of the taxicab industry revealedthat 71% of all yellow taxicab drivers lease their taxi (Schaller, 2006).
All of the drivers interviewed were male, which is not surprising giventhat 99% of all yellow taxicab drivers are male (Schaller, 2006). Most ofthe drivers interviewed were foreign born, which is also not surprisinggiven that 91% of drivers are foreign born (Schaller, 2006).7 Two driversinterviewed were born in the United States. I conducted all interviews inEnglish.
To become a taxicab driver, one must take a mandatory 24 hours oftaxi school coursework.8 For this ethnography, I attended the MasterCabbie Taxi Academy. A current driver taught each of the classes.I draw from these taxi school experiences because in many ways theyare sites that elaborate and systematize the lived experiences of taxidrivers—that I shall detail later.
Through my engagement with this coursework and in my time work-ing as a taxi driver, I began to meet and speak with other drivers. Often,in the course of our conversations, I would ask what brought them tothe profession. Despite the disparate personal experiences prior to taxidriving, drivers would consistently use the phrase, ‘‘I am my own boss,’’to express their experiences with this form of work.
Initially, this statement surprised me. In many ways it seemed asthough these drivers were not their own bosses. For example, driverswho lease their taxi do not own the means of their production, which inthis case is a taxi medallion. Moreover, drivers cannot independentlydetermine the price of their fare, since the TLC regulates the rate(Vidich, 1976). For these reasons, I began to pursue the question ofhow drivers defined being their own boss. What were the indicatorsthey were using? What were the effects of this perception for workerengagement with economically precarious work?
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Employing the extended case method (Burawoy, 1998), one mighthave expected drivers to reference their ability to make decisions onwhere to pick up fares or how to best traverse both the city and itstraffic. As interactive service workers, one might have even expecteddrivers to reference their discretion in how to interact with passengers.While some drivers did point to these freedoms, I found that these werenot the crucial indicators that drivers used to define their autonomy.Instead, I found that the critical freedom associated with taxi drivingwas the ability to control their work schedule.
For the interviews, I utilized a case study logic (Small, 2009). Ratherthan treating each interview as a unit of a larger sample, I treated eachas a separate case. This iterative approach would both provide agreater understanding of the question at hand—namely, what are theperceptions of those individuals who engage in independent contractwork—and subsequently inform the next interview until saturationwas achieved. In the end, I found that schedule control emerged asthe primary reason for their investment in taxi driving, which was sig-nificant in the context of personal aspirations and social relationsbeyond the workplace.
One of the limitations of this research design is that it does not have alongitudinal component. That is, I did not conduct follow-up interviewswith the drivers interviewed in this study to see whether their commit-ments were (or were not) sustained or what their career trajectorieswere. In this way, I cannot say whether Vic, for example, left taxi driv-ing after completing his college education or if some types of drivers aremore likely elicit to short-term investment than others. Moreover,because I did not shadow the drivers interviewed, I cannot say withcertainty that they ever left work early or took days off. To addressthese limitations, I draw on previous research to show that drivers, ingeneral, vary in the number of hours worked each day (Ashenfelteret al., 2010; Camerer et al., 1997; Crawford & Meng, 2011; Farber,2005, 2008, 2015). Moreover, I draw on interviews with medallionowners to corroborate the claims of drivers that they take off formonths at a time. Finally, I draw on previous research that showsthat there is a high attrition rate among taxi drivers, in general(Hodges, 2007; Schaller, 2006).
Scholars have shown that in some cases, respondents may seek togive socially appropriate answers to questions, even if this involves dis-torting the truth (Pager & Quillian, 2005). In this case, one might expectthat a ‘‘social desirability bias’’ would lead drivers to claim that theywere their own boss, and overstate their autonomy, or convey
278 Work and Occupations 44(3)
satisfaction with a job that they really find to be quite miserable.Examining worker investment, however, entails taking seriously thebenefits and rewards that individuals claim that they derive fromwork, without losing the critical perspective on the work arrangementin which they investing (Sherman, 2007). Indeed, in the earlier section,I showed how this work arrangement creates the conditions of econom-ically precarious work (i.e., unpredictable wages, a lack of health bene-fits). In the next section, I will show that drivers repeatedly explained tome these negative aspects of taxi driving in our conversations.Moreover, because I worked as a taxi driver, I also describe my ownexperiences with the constraints that drivers’ either alluded to or failedto mention. However, I will also show that drivers seemed unified intheir perception of the benefits associated with this work arrange-ment—namely, the ability to control their work schedule. I argue thatthis form of control is significant given the self-conceptions that driversbring with them to this form of work, which are often tied to personalaspirations and social relations outside the world of taxi driving.
Investing in Independent Contract Work
Nearly 500,000 taxi fares take place in New York City each day(Schaller, 2006). Yet, it is not the case that any one driver is guaran-teed to pick-up any one of those fares. Indeed, throughout the courseof the shift, there is a surprising amount of time that a driver ridesempty.9
One place where a driver is guaranteed to secure a fare, however, isJohn F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK).10 While JFK providesthis certainty, it also provides a setting for driver sociability. There,drivers talk-shop, eat, and pray together. They play cards in the backof SUV-Taxis and backgammon and dominoes on top of wood panelscovering garbage cans. They roll dice in those still unoccupied spaces inthe lanes. As I waited alongside them at JFK for fares, I was able tospeak with them out their experiences in this occupation.
During one waiting period, I spoke with Jamal, a middle-agedMoroccan man who had been driving taxi for almost 10 years. ‘‘Yousee how nice drivers are to one another here?’’ he asked rhetorically, ashe scanned the lot with his pointer-finger. ‘‘The second you get out ofhere,’’ he continued, ‘‘forget about it, they are ready to cut your throat.’’I nodded along, as we both observed a group of men walking andtalking together. ‘‘But why do you think that is?’’ I asked. ‘‘Becauseit’s money,’’ Jamal replied. ‘‘You know, we work on 50 cent clicks,’’
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he said, referring to the metered fare of a taxi ride. ‘‘It takes a lot ofclicks to make rent.’’
Yasser, a younger Egyptian driver who was standing nearby, quicklyinterjected: ‘‘This job changes you’’ he said, ‘‘Because you have to paythe lease, and the gas, you are ready to kill for two dollars.’’ Yassercontinued, ‘‘When you drive taxi, the only thing you think about ismaking money.’’
Indeed, what both Jamal and Yasser’s statements illuminate is thatthe economic risks associated with taxi driving do not go unnoticed bythe drivers themselves. Rather, it confronts them and is measured withevery click of the meter. Since drivers are uncertain of the next fare,there is a persistent unpredictability regarding their wages.
As Bogdan, a middle-aged Polish driver, explained:
You can always do this job, but that does not mean that you get paid.
You can put in a lot of effort, and sometimes you make nothing for that
effort. You can work for free, or even lose money after a 12-hour shift.
In fact, in the course of this ethnography, I experienced shifts where Ilost money. For example, on one occasion, the fuel pump of my taxirequired servicing, which interrupted my shift for 3 hours—for whichmy garage owner only took 9 dollars off the lease (it was 109 dollars ashift, at the time). After paying the remaining 100 dollars, as well as 30dollars in gas for that day, I returned home with six dollars less than Ihad when I began the shift.
While drivers frequently expressed the risks of taxi driving in eco-nomic terms, they also spoke of the risks of taxi driving in terms of thelack of health benefits.11 At a public hearing on a fare increase in July of2012, the labor leader, Bhairavi Desai, summed up this type of economicuncertainty. She implored the TLC chairperson to consider what a lackof health benefits means for drivers:
Imagine going to your job day in and day out . . . [and] you don’t have any
benefits to call your own . . . [if] you face your own personal crisis, either
due to illness or injury on the job . . . that keeps you from working . . . the
idea that you have nothing to fall back on is absolutely unconscionable.
Although taxi drivers expressed the negative aspects of taxi driving (i.e.,unpredictable wages, a lack of health benefits), I found that they oftenmade sense of their work by expressing their sense of control over theirwork schedule. Drivers claimed that they could impose predictability on
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their time, and this predictability made taxi driving preferable to otherlow-wage jobs, which do not afford this type of control to their workers.The following represents a sample of this recurrent expression:
Yasser: ‘‘It’s a very difficult job, but that does not mean that I hate
it . . .This is better than other jobs . . . I could find a job, in a restaurant
or something . . .But here I can work at any time. I can stop at any time.
I work whenever I want.’’
Ali: ‘‘I never had a dream to be a driver . . . I worked in gas stations,
kitchens, in a repair shop as a mechanic . . .With driving, there is the
freedom to work when you want. You can take days off, and that’s
why I like it.’’
Bogdan: ‘‘There is a kind of freedom to driving. Like tomorrow, if I don’t
want to work, I don’t have to go.’’
Of course, not all drivers made sense of their work by expressing thissense of control, however. In fact, one driver stated, ‘‘If it is true thathell exists, then driving taxi is that hell.’’ Indeed, rather than speak ofthe freedoms associated with taxi driving, he spoke extensively aboutthe long hours, low wages, and the potential of losing money on the job.‘‘Some days you can make 20 dollars, or even 5 dollars . . . but, if the carbreaks or something, or if you get a ticket, you go home and you lostmoney . . . It’s a really tough job.’’ He ended our conversation bluntly,‘‘As long as I am surviving, I will be ok.’’
In practice, there are constraints placed on a driver’s schedule con-trol. The most obvious constraint is the 12-hour shift, which is oftenfirmly policed by garage dispatchers. For example, I was once penalized$25 by my garage dispatcher for being 15 minutes late to hand over mytaxi. Moreover, there is a constraint placed on the shifts that driverswork. For example, when I started my ethnographic work of taxi driv-ing, I was not able to pick any shift that I wanted. Indeed, the morelucrative shifts (i.e., Friday and Saturday nights) already had driversassigned to them at my garage. Instead, I was given the less lucrativeday shifts on Monday and Tuesday, with the promise of getting a bettershift with seniority. More still, the uncertainty of daily income places itsown constraint on drivers. Economists have suggested that drivers tendto drive longer hours on days when there are less fares, in an attempt tohit an earnings target (Camerer et al., 1997). Finally, as independentcontractors, if drivers do not work then they do not get paid.
Nevertheless, despite these constraints, I found that taxi drivers madesense of their work by expressing their sense of control over their work
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schedule. In what follows, I will show that while drivers stated that theyare able to make a similar income in other forms of low-wage work, theymaintained that taxi driving allowed for this critical freedom to controlthe timing and duration of their work. I argue that this freedom issignificant to drivers in the context of their personal aspirations, aswell as their social relations outside taxi driving. The result of schedulecontrol is that drivers become invested the structure of independentcontract work, which affords them those opportunities. In this way,the same work arrangement that brings about economically precariouswork also provides mechanisms to generate worker investment.
The Significance of Schedule Control
Men-in-the-Making
On my first day of taxi school coursework, the instructor began thesection by encouraging those driving applicants to continue theireducation. The instructor spoke favorably of the reasonably priced pro-fessional certification programs offered at the community college wherethe coursework was administered. Moreover, in noting the opportunityto pursue one’s education, the instructor made a direct link to the abilityfor taxi drivers to control their own work schedule. ‘‘The good thingabout taxi driving,’’ he claimed, ‘‘is that it is flexible. You can come andgo as you please.’’
At first, I thought of the instructor’s suggestion to the class as pecu-liar. To be sure, those in attendance were in the process of securingemployment. Yet, I found that schedule control would be significantfor drivers who were pursing human capital development. In fact, laterin that class one aspirant claimed that he came to taxi driving for thisprecise reason. The young man, Bae, was studying business manage-ment at the community college where the taxi coursework was taught.He said that he had recently quit a full-time job at a restaurant, due tothe repeated scheduling conflicts with his pursuit of an education.Indeed, research demonstrates that restaurant workers often have tobe flexible, which makes it difficult to commit to a classroom scheduleor to stable patterns of child care at home (Halpin, 2015). Like Vic, Baespoke of the benefits of schedule control and the time it would afford hisstudies. Throughout our conversation, Bae maintained a general enthu-siasm regarding his future as a taxi driver and suspected that driving taxiwould not be a ‘‘real job-job,’’ that imposed control by enforcing awhen and a where.
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While taxi driving has long been a refuge for those, like Vic and Bae,who wish to support themselves during their educational development,drivers with advanced degrees also noted the importance of the abilityto control their work schedule. Samir held a master’s degree in telecom-munications, but found it difficult to find a job, due to his lack ofrelevant work experience. ‘‘I handed in my resume. I went throughthe interviews,’’ he explained, ‘‘but you have to have experience.If you don’t, then forget about it.’’ Although he noted that the jobwas both physically and mentally exhausting, Samir claimed that leasinga taxi nevertheless afforded him an opportunity to gain the valuablework experience that had been otherwise difficult to obtain. He said:
Now, I am doing software testing. You find bugs or viruses in software.
I am paying people to teach me, and after that they are going to find a job
for me. That is a good job—70,000 dollars a year. For now, I am practi-
cing, and driving a taxi lets me study.
As independent contractors, taxi drivers are able to make decisionsregarding the number of hours that they work over the course of ashift. Scholars have shown (Ashenfelter et al., 2010; Camerer et al.,1997; Crawford & Meng, 2011; Farber, 2005, 2008, 2015) that taxidrivers often vary in their decisions on when to end a given shift.While these scholars argue that these decisions are made due to eithernarrow bracketing and loss aversion, or cumulative hours worked andproximity to the garage, what these statements illuminate is that thissense of latitude regarding the duration of one’s work is significant forsome taxi drivers in the context of their personal aspirations beyond theworld of taxi driving. Moreover, these statements illuminate that thisform of control is meaningful in the context of other low-wage jobs (i.e.,work in a restaurant), which do not afford the same latitude to theirworkers, and instead require that workers be flexible.
For drivers like Vic, Bae, or Samir, the ability to end a workday earlyor begin a shift late, in order to attend a class or study for a mid-term,allows them to gain the necessary human capital to compete in thecontemporary labor market, and potentially secure a better job.Schedule control allows for them to frame taxi driving as a stepping-stone occupation and to see themselves as ‘‘men-in-the-making.’’
The consequence of these choices, however, is that drivers have littlelong-term commitment to this form of work. Indeed, taxi driving isnoteworthy for having a high-turnover rate (Hodges, 2007). A recentstudy, for example, found that only one-third of all drivers have been
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driving for 5 years or more (Schaller, 2006). As a result, I argue that thestructure of taxi driving generates what scholars have referred to aseffort rather than consent (Sallaz, 2015).
Family Men
While both native and immigrant drivers noted the ability to controlone’s schedule, I found that it would have a particular significance forimmigrant drivers due to their need to fulfill familial obligations abroad.
Jean began leasing a taxi after migrating from Haiti. He had beenworking as a driver for 10 years, and typically drives 7 days a week. ‘‘It’sa tough job,’’ he claimed. Jean bemoaned the long hours, waking up at3:15 in the morning, the incessant traffic, as well as the pressures fromthe lease, police, and passengers. ‘‘It is all very stressful, but sometimesyou don’t have a choice,’’ he asserted. ‘‘You see, I didn’t grow up here,and I didn’t go to school,’’ he continued, reflecting on the constraints hefaced in the job market, ‘‘When I came to this country, I did not knowEnglish or anything.’’ Jean explained that prior to taxi driving, he hadworked in construction. It was in relation to this previous work experi-ence that he made meaning of taxi driving. He said:
With construction, you know how it goes, when you work for someone
else, they give you two weeks vacation a year. If you take more time off,
then you will need to find a new job. With driving, I can be my own boss.
I have the freedom to do whatever I want.
Jean then explained why the ability to take time-off was significant forhim. ‘‘My family is there,’’ he said, in reference to his native country ofHaiti. ‘‘I usually drive for two or three months at a time and then I gohome for 6 months,’’ he continued, ‘‘and then I come back for anothertwo months, and then I go back.’’ When I asked if there was ever aproblem securing a taxi when he returned to New York City, he repliedconfidently, ‘‘No, you can get a car whenever you want. There is alwaysa taxi waiting.’’ To conclude our conversation, Jean summarized hisperception of work in the following way: ‘‘You can have a good joband a miserable life. I may be working hard for those two or threemonths, but I get to go home. So, I have a good time every day.’’
Several days after my conversation with Jean, Ibrahim, a Guineandriver of 7 years, related a similar experience of taxi driving. ‘‘I don’tlike to drive,’’ Ibrahim said, to begin our conversation. Similar to otherdrivers, he noted the economic pressures he felt from the lease and the
284 Work and Occupations 44(3)
long hours he spends working to make a living. Like Jean, Ibrahimexplained that the benefit of leasing a taxi was that he was able toreturn to his native country every year and stay for three or fourmonths with each visit. A naturalized American citizen, Ibrahim saidthat he attempted to bring his wife and young son to the United Statesfrom Guinea on several occasions, but had been unsuccessful. UnlikeJean, however, who expressed a deep personal satisfaction in thosereturn visits home, Ibrahim looked forward to the day when such excur-sions were no longer necessary. He said:
With this job, I can leave at any time, come back, and start driving again.
So, that is the reason why I drive. It gives me that freedom. But if I had
my family here, I would not drive. I would open my own business.
Ibrahim explained that he once owned a clothing store in the Bronx.A combination of meager profits and pressing familial obligations inGuinea forced him to close the store. ‘‘When my family finally comeshere,’’ he said, ‘‘I will open my own store again.’’ But until then, he said,he will continue to drive a cab.
The fact that drivers take off for months at a time was also noted byseveral medallion brokers and ‘‘fleet’’ medallion owners that I spokewith throughout the course of the ethnography. One ‘‘fleet’’ medallionowner explained, ‘‘Immigrant drivers don’t bring their wives and chil-dren with them. So, they go back for 3 months at a time with what theymade, and then they come back.’’ The owner then placed this reality inthe context of his own economic uncertainty, ‘‘It is my responsibility tofigure out how to get drivers in the seats of my taxis 7 days a week, 365days a year.’’
As independent contractors, taxi drivers are able to make decisionsregarding the timing of their work. As scholars have noted (Hodges,2007; Mitra, 2003a, 2003b, 2009), the shift to the leasing system wasaccompanied by an increase in the proportion of immigrant drivers. Infact, 91% of all yellow taxicab drivers are foreign born (Schaller, 2006).What these cases illuminate is that for some immigrant drivers, theability to control one’s work schedule is significant in the context oftheir social relations outside of the world of driving taxi. Moreover, thiscontrol is meaningful in the context of other low-wage jobs (i.e., work inconstruction) which do not afford this type of control to their workers.
For drivers like Jean or Ibrahim, the ability to take months off at atime affords them the opportunity to go home and fulfill necessaryfamilial obligations. This control allowed them to see themselves as
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‘‘family men.’’ The significance of these choices is that workers becameinvested in the structure of a work arrangement that makes thosechoices possible, thereby legitimating a work arrangement that produceseconomically precarious work.
Conclusion
This article has shown how independent contract work creates econom-ically precarious work for New York City yellow taxi drivers, and hasexplored how drivers make sense of the economic risks they face eachworkday. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic data, it finds that taxidrivers made sense of their work by expressing a sense of control overtheir work schedule. It has argued that this ability to control one’sschedule serves as the basis for worker investment in the structure ofindependent contract work.
This article contributes to sociological theory and research in anumber of important ways. The main contribution of this article isthe finding that self-conceptions that drivers bring with them to theindependent contract work matter for how they evaluate that workarrangement. In his work, Burawoy (1979) argued that the identitiesthat workers bring in from outside the shop floor are irrelevant totheir experiences of autonomy, and subsequently to their consent tothe structure of work. By contrast, the findings of this article showthe self-conceptions that drivers brought with them to this form ofwork interacted with the structure of the lease work arrangement toinfluence how they experienced schedule control, which generatedtheir investment in the structure of that work arrangement.
This article expands upon this literature by focusing on how theexperience of schedule control generates worker investment. I arguethat this form of control is distinct from other mechanisms examinedpreviously in the literature in that it does not derive significance fromthe status hierarchies on the shop floor or contained in the service tri-angle. Instead, the significance of this form of autonomy for taxi driversderives from their personal aspirations and social relations beyond theworkplace. In this way, this article expands on this literature by high-lighting the variety of foundations for the generation of investment.
This article also contributes to a literature on worker engagement inthe post-Fordist labor process. In his recent work, Sallaz (2015) arguedthat by decoupling the ‘‘learning game’’ from the reward structures,employers elicit short-term investment, with high rates of attrition.This article contributes to this work by showing that the short-term
286 Work and Occupations 44(3)
investment of taxi drivers is generated not by a learning game but ratherby the structure of independent contract work that allows for them tocontrol their work schedule.
Finally, the findings of this article also have implications for futurestudies of work in the ‘‘gig’’ or ‘‘sharing’’ economy. For example, dri-vers for ‘‘e-hail’’ or ‘‘ride-sharing’’ applications, such as Uber and Lyft,also work as independent contract workers (Hall & Krueger, 2015).12
While drivers for those e-hail companies do not pay a lease to operatethe application, or keep the full earnings of the meter—they are paid acommission from each fare (Goncharova, 2017)—as independent con-tractors, they are nevertheless exposed to uncertain and unpredictablewages, and lack health insurance, pension benefits, as well as formal jobladders for promotion. In this way, drivers for ride-sharing companiesmay also be engaging in economically precarious work, and their jobmay also be categorized as a bad job.
Yet, as independent contractors, drivers for e-hail applications alsohave freedom to control their work schedules. Interestingly, in a recentsurvey of 601 active Uber drivers conducted in December 2014,researchers found that workers reported that they decided to drive forUber because of schedule flexibility associated with independent con-tract work. In fact, 87% of drivers said that they decided to drive forUber because they wanted to ‘‘be [their] own boss and set [their] ownschedule,’’ and 85% of drivers wanted to ‘‘have more flexibility in [their]schedule and balance [their] work with [their] life and family’’ (Hall &Krueger, 2015). Moreover, they found that 73% of Uber drivers wouldchoose the ability to control one’s work schedule, over a steady 9-to-5job with a set salary and fringe benefits. Indeed, they contend thatindividuals who value flexibility are the most likely to seek opportunitieswith Uber.
The findings of this survey, however, overlook key relationship con-cerns (i.e., visiting family, caring for sick or disabled parents or children)and activities for building their work experience or their educationalcredentials that require control over their schedules. Without a moresociological understanding of economic life, researchers run the risk ofignoring the relational structures that support the rhetorical markers offreedom, flexibility, and entrepreneurship in the new sharing economy.Self-conceptions give meaning to the experience of autonomy and ofschedule control, but these conceptions do not operate outside ofongoing relationships between workers and their families, as well asthe variety of jobs individuals are now taking on as their incomes andexpenses become more volatile.
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Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/orpublication of this article.
Notes
1. The New York City yellow taxicab emerged as the result of the Haas Act of1937 (Hodges, 2007). Passed on March 9, 1937, the act limited the number oftaxicabs in New York City to 13,595 (Shreiber, 1973). The act restricted entry
into the taxi market through the creation of a medallion system, which guar-antees its owner the exclusive right to pick-up passengers from the streets ofNew York City (or ‘‘street hail’’).
2. The guidance also states that, when determining whether a worker is anemployee or independent contractor, all of the factors must be consideredin each case, and no one factor (particularly the control factor) is determina-
tive of whether a worker is an employee. Moreover, the guidance states thatthe factors themselves should not be applied in a mechanical fashion, butwith an understanding that the factors are indicators of the broader conceptof economic dependence (Weil, 2015).
3. The lack of schedule control is consistent with the more general trend of adeclining ability of workers to control their work. Drawing on the work ofHarry Braverman (1974), scholars have examined the various strategies
deployed by employers to control the work of low-wage service workers(Leidner, 1993). One strategy has been to implement training programs,whereby instructors teach applicants what are called ‘‘feeling rules’’—or
instructions about how one should feel which guide workers’ self-presenta-tion and their treatment of service recipients (Hochschild, 1983). Anotherstrategy has been to adopt a ‘‘management by customers’’ approach,whereby employers solicit opinions from customers about the service they
received (Fuller & Smith, 1991). Still another strategy has been to use ‘‘mys-tery shoppers,’’ whereby those who know the standards for service report onworkers’ behavior (Sherman, 2007).
4. Pejoratively referred to as ‘‘gypsy cabs,’’ these non-medallion taxis began toappear in the mid-1960s in the poorer and outlying neighborhoods of NYC,which medallion taxicabs drivers avoided; in part, out of fear for driver
safety, and in part to favor the more lucrative markets of Manhattan(Vidich, 1976).
5. Since 1996, the lease rate has been regulated by the TLC (Schaller, 2006). The
lease rate varies based on the shift (i.e., the night shift is typically moreexpensive), the day of the week (i.e., Friday and Saturday nights are typically
288 Work and Occupations 44(3)
more expensive that Monday or Tuesday nights), and lease duration (usuallya discount is given to those drivers who lease by the week, or even sometimesby the month). During the course of this ethnography, I paid two different
lease rates; due to the rate hike in September 2012. Prior to the rate hike, thelease rate was $109.77. After the rate hike, the lease rate was $120.
6. The TLC, however, has adopted a myriad of strategies to monitor how
drivers interact with the passengers in New York City. For example, theTLC solicits feedback from passengers on driver behavior. In fact, both theTLC website, as well as the 311 hotline, allows passengers to either file a
complaint or commend a driver for their service. Moreover, the TLC alsoemploys ‘‘secret riders.’’ In this case, both TLC officers and undercoverpolice officers act as a potential fare in an attempt to sanction driverswho are not following prespecified behaviors. More still, the TLC imple-
mented a ‘‘taxi school’’ training program, whereby instructors teach workerself-presentation and their treatment of passengers. While these methods ofsurveillance may minimize worker discretion in the course of interactions,
they do not directly affect drivers’ decisions on the timing or duration oftheir work, which is the focus of this article.
7. The drivers interviewed migrated from Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Guinea,
Haiti, India, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Senegal, SouthKorea, and Sudan.
8. The coursework is divided into three 8-hour classes, which covered the
geography of New York City, driver or passenger relations as well as therules and regulations of driving, respectively.
9. In fact, a study found that drivers ride empty roughly 40% of the time(Schaller, 2006).
10. Before a yellow taxicab driver can pick up a passenger at JFK, that drivermust first obtain a dispatch ticket from the Central Taxi Hold. The CentralTaxi Hold is a fenced-off lot, located off the Belt Parkway entrance to the
airport, and surrounded by various cargo depots as well as other long-termparking lots. Drivers must queue into one of the 54 lanes and wait to bedispatched to one of the terminals that are in need of their service. With
each lane long enough to hold an average of 10 to 15 taxis, the result is thatthe wait time can vary anywhere from 5 minutes to 4 hours.
11. Indeed, taxi driving is also noteworthy for being a physically dangerousprofession, which is another way in which taxi driving may be understood
as precarious work. In fact, Diego Gambetta and Heather Hamill (2005)offer the sobering statistic that a taxi driver is 60 times more likely to bemurdered on the job than the average worker. In fact, the authors also note
that taxi drivers are frequently the victims of violent assaults. As one driversaid to me, ‘‘Taxi driving is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, younever know who is sitting behind you.’’ Yet, because the physical risks
associated with driving were not the result of a shift to independent contractwork, this aspect of taxi driving is beyond the scope of this article.
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12. Over the past 4 years, drivers for both Uber and Lyft have legally chal-lenged their classification as independent contract workers, claiming thatthey should be treated as employees because the companies exert significant
control over their work (Silverman, 2015). For their part, both companieshave maintained that they are virtual marketplaces, not employers, andtheir drivers are afforded flexibility and freedom not consistent with
employee status (Isaac & Singer, 2015). Indeed, Uber has frequentlystated that its drivers are able to set their own schedules and do not haveto abide by the many other requirements that companies can impose on
employees (Isaac, 2015). These challenges, however, have resulted in mixedoutcomes in the courts. In June 2015, the California Labor Commissioner’sOffice said that a driver for Uber, Barbara Ann Berwick, should be classi-fied as an employee, not an independent contractor (Isaac & Singer, 2015).
The ruling ordered Uber to reimburse Barbara Ann Berwick $4,152.20 inexpenses and other costs for the roughly 8 weeks that she worked as anUber driver. The ruling, however, did not apply to drivers beyond Berwick.
In January 2016, Lyft agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit brought bydrivers in California (Isaac, 2016a). Under the settlement, drivers wouldcontinue to be classified as contractors, but the company would pay
$12.25 million to those represented in the lawsuit. In April 2016, Uberagreed to similar settlement, whereby drivers would continue to be classifiedas contractors and Uber would pay as much as $100 million to the roughly
385,000 drivers represented (Isaac & Scheiber, 2016). In August 2016, how-ever, Judge Edward M. Chen struck down the proposed settlement, claim-ing that it was ‘‘not fair, adequate, and reasonable’’ (Isaac, 2016b).
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Author Biography
Nicholas Occhiuto is a PhD student in sociology at Yale University. Hisresearch interests include economic sociology, sociology of markets,organizations, occupations and work. His dissertation examines theimpact of smartphone applications on the taxicab markets in NewYork, Chicago, San Fransisco, and Austin, in order to understandhow innovations affect markets.
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