Star Tribune
Twin Cities drivers join worldwide Uber, Lyft strike
Organizers say hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers in Minnesota shut off their phone apps on Valentine’s Day, joining a global one-day protest designed to draw attention to complaints of low pay and other problematic work conditions.
The ride share drivers are striking across the United States, Canada and Europe in the hopes of forcing the app-based ride-share companies to raise driver salaries, set minimum wage standards and insert greater transparency into how much of each fare the independent contractors get to retain.
“We are in solidarity with the international movement to go off line in protest to Uber and Lyft’s unfair pay and treatment of its workers,” said Yusuf Haji, who heads a group of several hundred Uber and Lyft drivers in the Twin Cities that is actively organizing the one-day strike in Minnesota. “We are no different than anybody else on this planet who is trying to make a living. So, we have asked all our drivers to go off line the whole day today, on Valentine’s Day.”
The companies have about 5 million ride share drivers worldwide, including about 1.7 million in the United States and more than 10,000 in the greater Twin Cities area.
“Despite the headlines, we’ve seen no impact on our operations or amount of drivers working,” said Uber spokesman Josh Gold. “In fact, in Minnesota, there were more trips so far today than there were during the same period last week and more drivers working.”
Uber and other companies that rely on self-employed gig workers say those workers appreciate the flexibility of the job. But many gig workers are pushing to unionize, saying that would give them the ability to bargain over compensation, safety measures and other benefits.
“We are constantly working to improve the driver experience, which is why just this month we released a series of new offers and commitments aimed at increasing driver pay and transparency,” said Lyft spokesman CJ Macklin. “This includes a new earnings commitment and an improved deactivation appeals process. Now, drivers will always make at least 70% of the weekly rider fares after external fees. It’s all part of our new customer-obsessed focus on drivers.”
The strike is the latest move for drivers who say they were badly impacted during the pandemic and have since seen their wages decline and their car expenses increase. Many drive full-time and have increased work hours but say they cannot generate enough income to feed their families and pay rent. Some rides, they say, pay as little as $5.
Drivers across the country held midday demonstrations at different airports, according to Justice for App Workers, the group organizing the effort.
During the last two years, frustrated Minnesota drivers have picketed at MSP Airport, Minneapolis City Hall and the state Capitol building. They have also worked with legislators, who passed a bill in 2023 that would have created a minimum wages for the drivers.
Gov. Tim Walz, however, vetoed the bill, opting instead to create a task force of drivers, companies and legislators to study the issues and come up with recommendations. The task force met from July through December and issued a report on Dec. 30 before disbanding.
Now drivers are trying to work with the Minneapolis City Council to pass a minimum pay law. Workers planned to meet with some Minneapolis City Council members again Wednesday night.
Twin Cities drivers say they get to keep only 25% to 50% of each ride but bear 100% of the gas and car maintenance costs that make the ride-share service companies billions of dollars each year.
Ride-hailing companies say they already pay a fair wage and have an appeals process in place for deactivations.
Drivers in the Twin Cities said they are tired of waiting for legislators or the companies to act.
“The only impact that can affect Uber and Lyft is when you turn off your app,” said St. Paul resident Abdirahman Mohamud, who has driven for Uber for seven years. “Turning off the app is the biggest tool we have to make sure that we are heard.” by both the companies and by the state government.
Eid Ali, president of a different driver’s organization, the 1,300-member Minnesota Uber Lyft Drivers Association (MULDA), said his group is not organizing a strike locally. But he said, “We support the workers and support anything that will raise the voices of the workers.”
MULDA hopes to continue to work with Minnesota legislators to bring a new bill that would help thousands of local ride share drivers, Ali said. The hope is to move the recommendations generated by the governor’s task force into bills and then into law.
Recommendations include creating a minimum pay of $5 for any ride and setting up a fair and easy process in which drivers who are suddenly removed from a ride share system can find out why and appeal the decision.
Includes reporting from the Associated Press.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
