Tech workers in solidarity with Taxi Protest Amsterdam strike during Canal Parade

The Tech Workers Coalition Netherlands expresses its support for the drivers of Taxi Protest Amsterdam, who are going on strike on the evening of 2 August during the busy Canal Parade in the capital.

Drivers working for the Uber and Bolt platforms are going on strike for 10 hours on Saturday night to demand:

• Better pay
• And end to unfair competition
• A halt to American and Estonian tech platforms that are coming to Amsterdam to ruin the taxi sector

The platform workers are also demanding mandatory professional qualifications for all drivers.

Companies such as Uber and Bolt have repeatedly demonstrated their disrespect for workers and Dutch labour law.

For years, the platform companies have wrongly tried to portray the drivers who work for them as ‘independent contractors’, instead of as the employees they truly are, in order to shirk their responsibilities as employers.

And in 2020, Uber carried out mass layoffs at its Amsterdam headquarters without the legally required approval from the UWV. Workers were pressured and their work accounts were closed without notice.

Moreover, the operating model of platforms like Uber and Bolt harms both drivers and passengers.

They enter a city. Billions in venture capital investments can keep them growing at a loss for years (sometimes aided by some illegal conduct), with the result that the local taxi sector and parts of public transport erode and crumble. At a certain point, a large part of the city and its local drivers have been made dependent on an app completely controlled by some tech company dictating all the rules.

When Uber introduced dynamic pricing tactics in 2023, it led to both higher fares (detrimental to passengers) and lower incomes for workers. Only Uber itself saw its revenues grow, as researchers from Oxford University demonstrated in a recent report.

Enough is enough.

Support the Taxi Protest Amsterdam!