SEATTLE – Uber and Lyft drivers in Seattle are taking home a smaller share of each ride than they were three years ago, even as the highly valued companies they drive for go public, a new analysis of pay data released by a drivers organization shows.
Across about 560 Uber and Lyft trips in Seattle, the company kept a median of 31% of the fare a rider paid, up from 20% around 2013, according to the analysis. The report was compiled by the App-Based Drivers Association, a local group of drivers affiliated with Teamsters Local 117, the union that advocated in recent years for allowing ride-hailing drivers to unionize.
The companies disputed the findings, which are based on a limited sample size of self-selected drivers and rides.
Uber and Lyft have rocketed to prominence across the globe in the last decade, raising concerns about poaching rides from public transit and a business model that uses drivers who are categorized as independent contractors without the protections of traditional employees.
The analysis comes about a month after Lyft went public and before Uber's initial public offering. The drivers association analysis, as well as the companies' own filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), "shows that the IPO payday for executives is being sold to investors on a promise of decreasing pay for workers," the report said.
The companies counter that drivers are making sufficient pay and benefiting from the flexibility of working through an app.
"Drivers are at the heart of our service — we can't succeed without them — and thousands of people come into work at Uber every day focused on how to make their experience better, on and off the road," an Uber spokesman said in a statement.
The argument that Uber and Lyft are keeping a higher portion of each ride is reflected in the companies' own documents, though the companies' numbers are more favorable to drivers than those compiled by the drivers group.
