New York Taxi Workers Alliance

Newsday May 13

Taxi organizations reacted with bewilderment and anger yesterday after Mayor Rudolph Giuliani derided their planned demonstrations against harsher fines and penalties as "theater of the absurd" - and threatened to punish any disruptions by revoking licenses and medallions.

"Tomorrow a group of taxi drivers are going to stay home so they should be able to drive through the streets recklessly and have the police do the minimum rather than the maximum," Giuliani declared yesterday at City Hall.

"He is psychologically sick," replied Farouk Bahtti, president of the 1,200-member Pak Brothers Yellow Cab Drivers Union, when told of the mayor's remarks. "Nobody is going to disrupt traffic. They'll be sitting peacefully at home."

Any attempt by officials to revoke drivers' privileges unlawfully will be met by an assertion of drivers' legal rights, Bahtti warned.

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance has called on the city's 43,000 yellow-cab drivers to simply stay off the road for 24 hours beginning at 5 a.m. today. A separate demonstration is planned for May 21, to involve cabs driving from Astoria to City Hall, to deliver a petition.

"Drivers are protesting the fact that nobody is listening to them," said Biju Mathew, an organizer with New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a coalition of 700 cab drivers.

"They are making it hard for us to make a living. This is a stressful job; we are under a lot of pressure," said Rizwa Raga, 25, of Brooklyn, a driver of two years.

It was in railing against the second demonstration that Giuliani declared, "Taxi drivers who try to close down a city are people who are not qualified to be taxi drivers."

The focus of the demonstration is a 17-point plan released in late April by the Giuliani administration, after new figures showed a big jump in taxi accidents from 1990 to 1996, calling for stiffer fines for various offenses and imposing a lower points threshold to suspend or revoke hack licenses.

But Giuliani charged: "What they're demonstrating for is to be able to drive 60 or 70 miles per hour, cut each other off and imperil people's lives, and they want the police to stay back and the Taxi and Limousine Commission to do nothing about it . . . This is theater of the absurd and I think you should focus on that.

"The first one who attempts to close the city down will have their medallion removed and their license revoked. Then we'll remove every medallion we have to; we'll revoke every license we have to. You're not going to be allowed to close down the city of New York."

"Tell me one thing. Is it possible to drive 60 miles per hour in the city? . . . I think he's overreacting," said Vijay Bali, office manager of the United Yellow Cab Drivers' Association Inc., which is organizing next week's demonstration. "I don't know if he's been fed the wrong information."

Bali said his organization recently has met with police to help ensure a peaceful demonstration and request a uniformed "escort," and was encouraged by a "nice session" between his group and an inspector at One Police Plaza.

NY Times May 13, 1998

NEW YORK -- By 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, the dispatcher at Safeway Car Service in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, had stopped taking reservations. The company's 42 aqua-colored Ford Crown Victorias had already been booked to ferry commuters around Manhattan on Wednesday morning, including one car that was to go to Central Park West at 5:30 a.m. to pick up a doctor who is scheduled to perform surgery at a downtown hospital at 8 a.m.

Meanwhile, the city's largest operator of black cars, The Executive Transportation Group, fired off e-mails and faxes to its 40 largest corporate customers, alerting them to a one-day strike called for Wednesday by the city's yellow cab drivers and offering Executive's softly humming Lincoln Town Cars as an alternative.

It was impossible to gauge Tuesday how many of the city's 12,000 yellow cabs would stand idle Wednesday during a planned work stoppage called to protest changes proposed by the Giuliani administration -- from drug and alcohol tests for new cabbies to heightened penalties for driving infractions to higher liability insurance requirements -- that drivers and owners consider punitive. Organizers of the job action have asked taxi drivers to stay off the road for 24 hours, starting at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

While taxi drivers who strike and fleet owners for whom they work stand to sacrifice a day's earnings, another part of the industry stands to reap the benefits: the livery service owners who generally cater to customers outside Manhattan and the owners of the so-called black-car fleets who have a steady stable of high-paying corporate clients.

While those services are not permitted to pick up curb-side customers in Manhattan, they can respond to phone calls requesting pickups and drop-offs.

"They're probably going to get more calls than they can handle," said Fidel Del Valle, a former chairman of the Taxi and Limousine Commission who now represents a coalition of 35 livery service owners. "That would be my guess."

Indeed, the owner of Big S. Transportation, a small livery service in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, plans to keep his 17 cars in Manhattan all day, anticipating calls from regular customers who usually rely on yellow cabs for travel within Manhattan during the day or from theatergoers, since Wednesday is a matinee day on Broadway.

"They really picked a good day," the owner, William Picarello, gushed, before tempering his enthusiasm. "It might be prosperous. But it is going to be very, very hectic."

Tuesday, that prospect was not welcomed by cabdrivers who were preparing to strike. Milling in front of a taxi garage in lower Manhattan, several drivers who lease medallions from the Susan taxi company had harsh words for drivers who planned to get behind the wheel Wednesday.

"Anyone that drives tomorrow can't like themselves that much," said Jean Felix Joseph, 45, who has driven a yellow cab for 10 years. "They can't have much pride. There could be trouble if everyone doesn't do what they're supposed to do."

Maureen Connolly, a spokeswoman for an umbrella group of yellow cab fleet owners, said the police had been notified about the possibility of violence Wednesday morning at taxi garages. "They want to make sure drivers who intend to drive are not subjected to harassment or intimidation," she said.

Marilyn Mode, the Police Department's deputy commissioner for public information, said officers would be present at taxi garages Wednesday morning, but she would not elaborate. Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said his agency had made no special arrangements for extra bus or subway service.

Taxi and Limousine Commission spokesman Allan Fromberg said the agency would deploy inspectors today to insure that neither unlicensed gypsy cabs nor licensed livery cars exploit the scheduled work stoppage by picking up curb-side customers.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who proposed the new regulations in response to a sharp rise in taxi accidents, denounced drivers who plan to take part in the work stoppage. "When there is a strike or a demonstration," he said, "it's largely for more wages. This is a strike and a demonstration for the purpose of being able to drive recklessly and have nothing done about it. This is a theater of the absurd."