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Comment by prostoalex | Hacker News Reader

But you don't break the strike by removing surge pricing and increasing everyone's pick-up time, you break it by keeping surge pricing, so that the drivers chasing the surge swarm the location in order to boost their earnings.

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Breaking the strike was picking up someone at JFK during the strike. Uber and Lyft both picked up riders during the strike. It's not complicated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/01/2...

So just black out the area for drivers and passengers?

Unless this is a coordinated effort, drivers and passengers will just go down the list to see if Lyft/Gett/Wingz/you-name-it is working.

Right. And then a driver from one of those services breaks the strike and the parent company they contract for gets hammered in the court of public opinion for breaking the strike.

The strike was widely publicized and the protest visible. Everyone involved was allowed to act as they saw fit and we can think what we want of those decisions as well.

Workers choosing not to work is a strike. Infrastructure owners choosing not to let workers work is something else.

Since Uber actively works against their drivers' collective organization and intentionally atomizes their labor force, a coordinated action for all drivers is only feasible in the context of Uber suspending service. If individual drivers chose not to service JFK, that was their decision and we can respect them for it. There were, however, Uber drivers breaking the strike and that reflects on Uber accordingly.

Can't modern drivers organize with a Facebook group or something? Or do Uber hire corporate spies to collect names and ban everyone?

Funny you should ask...

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/29/12314544/uber-ergo-seattle...

However the typical activist doesn't get this level of nuance. They apparently employ the reasoning of a 6 year old: case in point (as mentioned earlier,) Lyft was partially funded by Peter Thiel.

How does it feel, knowing people with the mentality of 6 year olds are doing more to affect change than you are?

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