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Driver Health and Welfare:
A Vision for San Francisco
By Mark Gruberg

In late 2002, the Board of Supervisors committed the city to establishing a health care plan for cab drivers. United Taxicab Workers was the moving force behind the idea. Supervisor Tom Ammiano carried the ball, and cab companies, which were seeking a meter and gate increase at the time, went along.

The meter went up and cab companies got the higher gates they sought, but the health plan fell the victim of foot dragging. The board missed its Jan. 1, 2004 deadline for enacting the plan, and several subsequent deadlines have also passed with no health care in sight. But the Department of Public Health is now moving forward, and it may not be overly optimistic to hope that the plan will be up and running by year’s end.

The long delay has been frustrating, but it has given UTW members much time for reflection and discussion. It occurs to us that despite its enormous importance, health care is only one of a series of issues relating to driver health and welfare. There are also related but distinct questions of infirmity, disability, old age and retirement.

UTW believes that all these can be dealt with through a single mechanism: a taxi driver health and welfare fund. An entity of this nature will be needed in any event, to serve as the conduit for funding and contracting agent with the health care provider. Why not extend the concept to other health-and-welfare-related concerns?

Take the issue of permit holders who are no longer able to drive. The Permit Drivers Association (PDA) refers to this as “disability,” and has a quick answer to what should happen at that point: “We get to keep the medallion for life. Problem solved.”

Hardly. In advocating for a lifetime medallion, permit holders are confounding the issue of disability with that of old age and retirement. They are seeking what amounts to a pension paid for by the labor of those it excludes: drivers without medallions.

The voters had an opportunity to embrace the permit holders’ solution in 2003, when Proposition N was on the ballot. The one-sentence measure couldn’t have been simpler: it would have exempted a permit holder who was unable to drive from the requirement to do so. Prop N lost by a margin of 72-28.

UTW favors another approach, one that is in line with Proposition K of 1978 and its design for placing and keeping permits in the hands of working drivers. Permit holders who no longer can or wish to drive a cab should be required to surrender their medallions to the next qualified driver on the list. But they should also be guaranteed a means to ease their retirement in the form of a continuing income after they give up the permit. Although there is more than one way to accomplish this, I believe it should be done by way of permit holder contributions to the health and welfare fund.

It makes sense for permit holders to pay for a benefit that is exclusively theirs to enjoy. Moreover, if they accept the funding principle, they could pretty much design the benefit to their own specifications.

Such a policy would not only provide a cushion for permit holders at the end of their driving careers. It would also furnish an incentive for them to surrender their permits and thus speed the turnover of medallions to drivers on the list.

As a counterpart to the permit holder provision, the fund should also provide financial assistance to drivers without medallions who have suffered severe illness or injury. Although long-term disability benefits may not be in the cards, it should be possible to furnish some lump sum or limited-term assistance at a reasonable cost. The health and welfare fund could also sponsor voluntary retirement plans, and could offer such other benefits as it was authorized to provide.
This is an ambitious plan, but one that need not be accomplished overnight.
Once the first priority — health care — is in place, other benefits could be phased in one by one.

Funding will naturally be a contentious issue, but given the tremendous advantages of providing benefits, all sides should be motivated to reach an accommodation. Those advantages will accrue not only to drivers, but to cab companies and the public as well.

Drivers will be healthier and more secure in their personal and family lives, and will have greater motivation to make cab driving a career. Companies will see reduced driver turnover and lower accident rates. The public will get better and safer service from a more stable, experienced and dedicated workforce.

Granted, the idea of job benefits for taxi drivers is a rather novel concept. But the city has a strong interest in drivers’ welfare because they provide a vital service to the public. By assuring them health and welfare benefits, San Francisco will be leading the way among American cities in its concern for this neglected group of workers.

An itinerant cab driver friend of mine once asked a sage he met in his travels where the center of the world was. “The center of the world is the place where new ideas meet the least resistance,” the wise man said.
Let’s make San Francisco the center of the taxi world.