Saying “a worker is a worker,” Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), and several taxi drivers from New York City today told the AFL-CIO Executive Council they want to be a part of the national labor federation.

They said drivers work 60 to 70 hours a week in one of the most grueling and dangerous jobs around—at minimum wage. They have no job security. Employers routinely misclassify them as “independent contractors” and deny the drivers protections given to traditional employees, including the freedom to form a union. They risk their health and safety daily, from sitting in a stationary position for hours to the real possibility of being assaulted, robbed or even murdered by a passenger or street thugs. And they’re completely uninsured, unprotected.
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