Investing in Independent Contract Work

Abstract

New York City “yellow” taxi drivers work as independent contractors. Like many independent contract workers, taxi drivers engage in economically precarious work—or work that is economically uncertain, unpredictable, and risky. This article explores how taxi drivers make sense of the economic risks they face each workday. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic data, it finds that taxi drivers made sense of their work by expressing a sense of control over their work schedule, which is significant given the self-conceptions that drivers bring with them to this particular work arrangement. As a result, this sense of schedule control serves as a mechanism for worker investment in the structure of independent contract work.

Keywords

independent contract work schedule control worker subjectivity precarious work

Like many independent contract workers, New York City “yellow” taxicab drivers engage in economically precarious work—or work that is economically uncertain, unpredictable, and risky.¹ Yet, as independent contractors, who lease their taxis, drivers are also able to control their work schedule. This article asks: how does the ability to control one’s work generate worker investment in the structure of independent contract work that produces uncertain (and often low) economic returns? I begin with an excerpt, taken from my 20-month ethnography of taxicab drivers in New York City.

Vic was an ex-marine who had been leasing his taxi for almost 4 years. “This job can get really frustrating,” he said. One of the most frustrating features of taxi driving was the prospect of losing money on the job. “Sometimes, you come into work, and you don't even make money for the lease,” he said. Later in our conversation, however, Vic placed the economic risks associated with taxi driving in the context of his future aspirations. “Without an education it's tough,” he said, reflecting on his prospects in the labor market, “and this job does have its benefits.” Vic was a student in night school, pursuing a degree in finance. One of the principle benefits, he claimed, was the ability to control his work schedule. He said:

This job is flexible. I can cut my hours short without asking, or when I have midterms or finals, I can take the day off entirely. At other low paying jobs, like at a restaurant, for example, you have to be there from “this-time-to-that-time.” They're just not as flexible. So, this job helps me with school.

For the rest of our conversation, Vic and I spoke alternatively of both the advantages and disadvantages of taxi driving. “The only thing that gets me through this,” he said, “is that I know that it will get better one day.” Vic explained that he was in his last semester of school and would search for a better job after the semester was completed.

This article will show that both the economic risks and the ability to control one’s work schedule are the direct result of the lease—a nonstandard work arrangement that predominates in the contemporary yellow taxicab industry. Drawing on the work of Burawoy (1979), I will argue that the ability to control one’s work schedule generates active investment of taxi drivers in the structure of the lease work arrangement, thereby legitimating the broader structures of work. Rather than generating consent, however, which is defined by long-term commitment, this article will argue that the lease work arrangement generates effort, which is defined by short-term investment and high rates of attrition (Sallaz, 2015). This article will expand upon this body of work by focusing on the self-conceptions that drivers bring with them to this work arrangement, which has been previously underexplored. I argue that those self-conceptions, which are often tied to future aspirations and social relations beyond the workplace, matter for how individuals make sense of independent contract work.

The article continues as follows. First, I bring together the literature pertaining to independent contract work, the mechanisms which generate worker investment in work, and the importance of schedule control for workers. Second, I show the historical change in the work arrangement of taxi drivers, whereby taxi drivers emerge as independent contract workers. Third, there is a discussion of data and methods. Fourth, the empirical section examines how workers experience an economically precarious form of work and explores how schedule control serves as a mechanism to generate investment in the structure of independent contract work. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the argument and explores the implications of these findings.

The Rise of Independent Contract Work

The study of the taxi industry in the United States is not new. Economists have used the taxi industry to analyze prices (Friedman, 1962; Lagos, 2003; Orr, 1969), the effects of regulation on market supply (Buchholz, 2016; Çetin & Eryigit, 2013; Frechette, Lizzeri, & Salz, 2016; Rogoff, 1980; Shreiber, 1973), the labor supply decisions of cab drivers (Ashenfelter, Doran, & Schaller, 2010; Camerer, Babcock, Loewenstein, & Thaler, 1997; Crawford & Meng, 2011; Farber, 2005, 2008, 2015), the moral hazard associated with the leasing market (Jackson & Schneider, 2011; Schneider, 2010), the impact of default tip suggestions on tip amounts (Haggag & Paci, 2014), and the factors that contribute to driver productivity (Cramer & Krueger, 2016; Haggag, McManus, & Paci, 2017). Sociologists have examined the relationship between the taxi drivers and their fare (Toiskallio, 2000; Vidich, 1976), both in terms of establishing trust (Gambetta & Hammil, 2005; Henslin, 1968) as well as the challenge of soliciting gratuities (Davis, 1959). Ethnographers have inquired into the occupational culture of taxi drivers (Henslin, 1967a; Psathas & Henslin, 1966), the difficulty that drivers face in accessing a restroom while working (Norén, 2010), the relationship between immigrant drivers and Black fares (Anderson, 2011), and the development of occupational niches among immigrant communities (Mitra, 2003a, 2003b, 2009). Taxi drivers have been extolled as religious innovators (Smith & Bender, 2004), magicians (Henslin, 1967b), and cowboys (Hoffmann, 2006). Finally, scholars have examined the multifaceted relationship between taxi drivers and labor unions (Gaus, 2014; Hodges, 2007; Islam, 2007; Mathew, 2008; Nash, 1968) as well as the health risks associated with the job (Gany, Gill, Ahmed, Acharya, & Leng, 2013).

For the purposes of this article, taxi driving provides an opportunity to bring together three sets of literature: (a) on the increase in independent contract work, (b) on the mechanisms which generate investment in work, and (c) on the importance of schedule control for workers.

Independent Contract Work

Scholars have noted that there has been an increase in the use of nonstandard work arrangements (Kalleberg, 2000). In fact, recent research suggests that all of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements (Katz & Krueger, 2016). Indeed, scholars have estimated that as many as one-third of all workers are now nonstandard workers (Hollister, 2011). This increase has been described as a rise of “contingent work” (Polivka & Nardone, 1989), “alternative work” (Cohany, 1998), “temporary,” “part-time,” or “independent contract work” (Kalleberg, 2000). In their seminal study on the matter, Kalleberg, Reskin, and Hudson (2000) defined nonstandard work in terms of what it is not—namely, regular, full-time employment which takes place at the employer's place of business, under the employer's control, and with the mutual expectation of continued employment.

Among the various forms of nonstandard work, New York City yellow taxi drivers work as independent contractors. The U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that there is no single rule or test for determining whether an individual is an employee or independent contractor for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA; U.S. Department of Labor, 2014). Due to numerous complaints from workers alleging misclassification, however, in July 2015, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued additional guidance regarding the application of the standards for determining who is an employee under the FLSA (Weil, 2015). In that guidance, the administrator stated that in order to make the determination whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor, courts have used a multifactorial “economic realities” test. The factors include the following: (a) the extent to which the work performed is an integral part of the employer’s business; (b) the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss depending on his or her managerial skill; (c) the extent of the relative investments of the employer and the worker; (d) whether the work performed requires special skills and initiative; (e) the permanency of the relationship; and (f) the degree of control exercised or retained by the employer.² Scholars have estimated that there are now more than 10 million individuals working as independent contractors in the United States (Kalleberg, 2011).

Much of the research on nonstandard work arrangements has shown that nonstandard work is substandard, compared with standard work arrangements (Broschak, Davis-Blake, & Block, 2008; Osnowitz, & Henson, 2016). Indeed, there is a general agreement among scholars that nonstandard work generally increases a worker’s exposure to “bad jobs,” which are characterized by low earnings, the lack of health insurance and pension benefits, and the absence of formal job ladders (Findlay, Warhurst, Keep, & Lloyd, 2017; Kalleberg, 2000; McGovern, Smeaton, & Hill, 2004). Moreover, scholars have argued that nonstandard work is more likely to be economically precarious work—or work that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky—due to the absorption of economic risk by workers (Kalleberg, 2011; Vallas & Prener, 2012). Importantly, Fligstein and Shin (2004) have shown that low-skilled and uneducated men are considerably more vulnerable to both bad jobs and precarious work.

How do workers make sense of these new conditions of work? Although there has been a great deal of research documenting the characteristic changes in these work arrangements, much less analytic attention has been paid to how workers themselves experience and respond to the new managerial regimes (Fligstein & Shin, 2004; Vallas, 2006). I seek to address these gaps in our understanding by placing the experiences of taxi drivers with independent contract work at the center of investigation.

Investing in Work

Sociologists have examined how experiences of autonomy have generated worker investment in work. Michael Burawoy (1979), for example, showed how the experience of control over machines and their output generated consent for workers on the factory floor. He argued that the game of “making out” allowed workers to construe themselves as skilled laborers, which was significant in the context of the hierarchical relationship between workers and management.

Beyond the factory floor, scholars have shown how the experience of control in customer interactions generates consent for interactive service workers. Unlike the dyadic relationship between managers and workers on the factory floor, interactive service work has a tripartite relationship among workers, managers, and customers (Leidner, 1993; Lopez, 2010). Scholars have argued that “tipping games” allowed workers to construe themselves as entrepreneurs (Sallaz, 2002, 2009), as well as skilled, strategic, powerful, and manipulative actors (Sherman, 2007), which was significant in the context of the status hierarchy of the service triangle.

More recently, Jeffery Sallaz (2015) has shown that for call center workers, discretion during phone calls generates effort rather than consent. He contends that by decoupling the “learning game” from the reward structures (i.e., wage increases, job security, seniority within an internal labor market, status within a stable peer group), call center workers have no motivation for sustained participation. As a result, he argues, this experience of control elicits short-term investment, with high rates of attrition, rather than long-term commitment.

These studies, however, did not examine how the experience of control over one’s work schedule may have served as a mechanism to generate investment from workers in their work. As scholars have noted, having autonomy over one's work schedule is conceptually distinct from having control over work tasks (Kalleberg, 2011). This form of control is distinct in that it does not derive its significance from the status hierarchies on the shop floor or contained in the “service triangle.” Instead, the significance of this form of autonomy derives from the self-conceptions that individuals bring with them to this form of work, which are often tied to personal aspirations and social relations beyond the workplace. In this way, this article expands on the literature on consent by adding a new mechanism for generating investment in work, which is particularly important given the rise of independent contract work in the contemporary economy.

Schedule Control

According to the Department of Labor, one of the key factors in determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor is the degree of control exercised by the employee (Weil, 2015). One aspect of job control that has gained considerable attention in recent years is schedule control. Sometimes referred to as flexibility, schedule control is defined as an employees' sense of latitude or control regarding the timing of their work, as well as the number of hours they work (Kelly, Moen, & Tranby, 2011). Research suggests that employees who report control over their work schedules also report less work–family conflict (Moen, Kelly, & Huang, 2008), greater work–life integration (Kelly et al., 2011; Sweet, Pitt-Catsouphes, & Boone James, 2016; Tausig & Fenwick, 2001), improved physical and mental health (Moen, Kelly, & Hill, 2011), higher job satisfaction (Glass & Finley, 2002; Lyness, Gornick, Stone, & Grotto, 2012), and reduced employee turnover (Moen et al., 2011).

Research also suggests that low-wage workers rarely have control over their work schedules (Williams & Connell, 2010).³ In fact, several studies have shown that in many low-wage jobs, the days and times of an employee’s work schedule are posted each week, which may vary from week to week, and for which an employee has little input (Halpin, 2015; Williams, 2005; Williams & Connell, 2010). As a result, these variable schedules make it difficult to plan activities outside of the job. Indeed, as Christine Williams (2005) argues, “It is exactly the kind of schedule that is incompatible with doing anything else” (p. 66).

This article will argue that the structure of independent contract work both produces economically precarious work for taxi drivers, by shifting economic risks onto drivers, as well as provides a mechanism that serves as the basis for worker investment in economically precarious work—the ability to control one’s work schedule. It argues that this ability to control one’s work schedule derives significance from the self-conceptions that drivers bring to this particular form of work, which are often related to their personal aspirations or family considerations. Before I can address how drivers make sense of this work arrangement, however, I must first describe the changes in the work arrangements that taxi drivers have experienced over the past 40 years.

Changes in the Work Arrangement of Taxi Drivers

Historically, driving a New York City yellow taxicab would never have been characterized as a “standard job.” Indeed, a drivers’ work has never been performed in an employer’s place of business, and is rarely, if ever, under an employer’s control. As a result, taxi drivers have always experienced a degree of autonomy over their work tasks (Hodges, 2007). For example, drivers have always had decision latitude with respect to where to pick-up passengers, as well as how to best to interact with those passengers and navigate the city.

Yet, taxi driving would not always have been characterized as economically precarious work or as a particularly bad job. To elaborate, from 1924 until 1979, New York City yellow taxicab drivers worked as employees of taxicab companies (Shreiber, 1973). Under this work arrangement, taxi drivers worked 5 days a week; 9-hours a day; received a minimum wage; a commission from daily fares; tips from passengers; and did not have to pay for gasoline (Stevens, 1991). By 1964, taxicab companies began to appropriate 5 cents out of every ride to cover comprehensive medical insurance for drivers (Shreiber, 1973). By 1966, companies provided a pension plan for drivers over the age of 65 who had provided 25 years of service (Perlmutter, 1966). By 1969, drivers had negotiated for paid vacation and a life insurance policy, which was made payable in the event of accidental death as a result of employment (Shreiber, 1973).

Indeed, under the commission system, the economic risks associated with daily variability in market demand were borne by the taxicab companies. To address that risk, companies monitored the economic performance of drivers and incentivized drivers by implementing a system of rewards and punishments (Stevens, 1991). For example, companies rewarded productive drivers by giving them bonus pay, the choice of days off, or a desirable steady car. Conversely, they punished less productive drivers by dispatching them in nondesirable cars, not dispatching them at all, or terminating them altogether (Stevens, 1991).

These conditions made driving appear attractive to drivers. In fact, in his survey of taxi drivers, Allen Stevens (1991) found that 89% of taxi drivers who had experience with the commission work agreement viewed it favorably. While some of the drivers interviewed spoke of the benefits in terms of the security of a paycheck, others spoke of employee benefits and paid vacations.

Despite the favorable perception from drivers, however, the work arrangement in the industry began to shift in the 1970s. On February 19, 1971, New York City council passed a bill to create the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) (Vidich, 1976). The TLC was in charge of supervising licensing, setting safety standards, and determining cab design (Rogoff, 1980). Its primary objective, however, was to regulate the burgeoning non-medallion industry (Rogoff, 1980).⁴ It is in this effort that the TLC would make one of the most significant regulatory decisions in the history of the taxi industry, which would radically transform the work arrangement of taxi drivers (Hodges, 2007).

On February 14, 1979, the TLC voted in favor of allowing taxicab owners to lease their vehicles to individual drivers (Herman, 1979). It was a move that many argued would stabilize the turbulent industry (Mathew, 2008). Although at the time the chairman of the TLC emphasized that leasing was voluntary (Herman, 1979), by the mid-1980s, the “commission garages” began to vanish and leasing all but took over the industry. A new standard for work arrangements had emerged in the taxi industry (Mathew, 2008).

As a result of this shift, drivers emerged as independent contractors (Stevens, 1991). Because drivers were no longer employees, medallion owners were no longer required to pay drivers a minimum wage or provide benefits, such as health insurance or pension benefits (Mathew, 2008). Instead, drivers paid a fixed sum (or lease rate) to the medallion owner in order to operate the taxicab for a 12-hour period of time and would keep all the earning of the meter, after paying for gasoline (Stevens, 1991).⁵

Importantly, under this new work arrangement, taxi drivers exclusively absorbed the risk of daily market variability (Mathew, 2008). That is, irrespective of the number of fares that a driver may pick-up on a given day, medallion owners were now assured a steady revenue stream with the payment of the lease. As a result, medallion owners no longer needed to monitor the economic performance of taxi drivers nor did they need a system of rewards or punishments to ensure performance.⁶ Instead, owners only needed to make sure that there were drivers available and willing to pay the lease.

Taxi drivers, by contrast, were no longer assured of any income. As the labor leader, Bhairavi Desai, said of taxi driving, “[it] is one of the few professions in the world where not only are you not guaranteed an income, but you might end a long twelve-hour workday losing the money you started with” (Mathew, 2008, p. 48). As a result, taxi driving became an economically precarious form of work and acquired many of the characteristics attributed to a bad job.

An awareness of these historical transformations is critical for understanding how contemporary drivers make sense of their work. I contend that despite the fact that independent contract work creates the conditions of economically precarious work, that same work arrangement also provides critical freedoms for drivers—namely, the ability to make decisions regarding their work schedule. Although drivers may not always be able to practice these freedoms in the ways they imagine, they identify it as critical for their commitment to the work arrangement. I argue that this perceived freedom to control one’s work schedule serves the basis for worker investment in the structure of independent contract work.

Data and Methods

This article draws from ethnographic data that I collected while working as a New York City yellow taxicab driver. Over 20 months, I not only worked as a driver but also conducted 29 semistructured and open-ended interviews with drivers, as well as 25 interviews with others in the taxi industry—including medallion owners, brokers, union leaders, industry regulators, as well as city and state officials. Because this article focuses on the experiences of drivers, I draw heavily from those interviews and use the ethnographic data to supplement drivers' narratives. Moreover, because the focus of this article is on drivers who work as independent contractors, I focus specifically on those yellow taxicab drivers who lease their taxi, as opposed to those who own their own medallion. A 2005 report on the status of the taxicab industry revealed that 71% of all yellow taxicab drivers lease their taxi (Schaller, 2006).

All of the drivers interviewed were male, which is not surprising given that 99% of all yellow taxicab drivers are male (Schaller, 2006). Most of the drivers interviewed were foreign born, which is also not surprising given that 91% of drivers are foreign born (Schaller, 2006).⁷ Two drivers interviewed were born in the United States. I conducted all interviews in English.

To become a taxicab driver, one must take a mandatory 24 hours of taxi school coursework.⁸ For this ethnography, I attended the Master Cabbie Taxi Academy. A current driver taught each of the classes. I draw from these taxi school experiences because in many ways they are sites that elaborate and systematize the lived experiences of taxi drivers—that I shall detail later.

Through my engagement with this coursework and in my time working as a taxi driver, I began to meet and speak with other drivers. Often, in the course of our conversations, I would ask what brought them to the profession. Despite the disparate personal experiences prior to taxi driving, drivers would consistently use the phrase, “I am my own boss,” to express their experiences with this form of work.

Initially, this statement surprised me. In many ways it seemed as though these drivers were not their own bosses. For example, drivers who lease their taxi do not own the means of their production, which in this case is a taxi medallion. Moreover, drivers cannot independently determine the price of their fare, since the TLC regulates the rate (Vidich, 1976). For these reasons, I began to pursue the question of how drivers defined being their own boss. What were the indicators they were using? What were the effects of this perception for worker engagement with economically precarious work?

Employing the extended case method (Burawoy, 1998), one might have expected drivers to reference their ability to make decisions on where to pick up fares or how to best traverse both the city and its traffic. As interactive service workers, one might have even expected drivers to reference their discretion in how to interact with passengers. While some drivers did point to these freedoms, I found that these were not the crucial indicators that drivers used to define their autonomy. Instead, I found that the critical freedom associated with taxi driving was the ability to control their work schedule.

For the interviews, I utilized a case study logic (Small, 2009). Rather than treating each interview as a unit of a larger sample, I treated each as a separate case. This iterative approach would both provide a greater understanding of the question at hand—namely, what are the perceptions of those individuals who engage in independent contract work—and subsequently inform the next interview until saturation was achieved. In the end, I found that schedule control emerged as the primary reason for their investment in taxi driving, which was significant in the context of personal aspirations and social relations beyond the workplace.

One of the limitations of this research design is that it does not have a longitudinal component. That is, I did not conduct follow-up interviews with the drivers interviewed in this study to see whether their commitments were (or were not) sustained or what their career trajectories were. In this way, I cannot say whether Vic, for example, left taxi driving after completing his college education or if some types of drivers are more likely elicit to short-term investment than others. Moreover, because I did not shadow the drivers interviewed, I cannot say with certainty that they ever left work early or took days off. To address these limitations, I draw on previous research to show that drivers, in general, vary in the number of hours worked each day (Ashenfelter et al., 2010; Camerer et al., 1997; Crawford & Meng, 2011; Farber, 2005, 2008, 2015). Moreover, I draw on interviews with medallion owners to corroborate the claims of drivers that they take off for months at a time. Finally, I draw on previous research that shows that there is a high attrition rate among taxi drivers, in general (Hodges, 2007; Schaller, 2006).

Scholars have shown that in some cases, respondents may seek to give socially appropriate answers to questions, even if this involves distorting the truth (Pager & Quillian, 2005). In this case, one might expect that a “social desirability bias” would lead drivers to claim that they were their own boss, and overstate their autonomy, or convey satisfaction with a job that they really find to be quite miserable. Examining worker investment, however, entails taking seriously the benefits and rewards that individuals claim that they derive from work, without losing the critical perspective on the work arrangement in which they investing (Sherman, 2007). Indeed, in the earlier section, I showed how this work arrangement creates the conditions of economically precarious work (i.e., unpredictable wages, a lack of health benefits). In the next section, I will show that drivers repeatedly explained to me these negative aspects of taxi driving in our conversations. Moreover, because I worked as a taxi driver, I also describe my own experiences with the constraints that drivers’ either alluded to or failed to mention. However, I will also show that drivers seemed unified in their perception of the benefits associated with this work arrangement—namely, the ability to control their work schedule. I argue that this form of control is significant given the self-conceptions that drivers bring with them to this form of work, which are often tied to personal aspirations and social relations outside the world of taxi driving.

Investing in Independent Contract Work

Nearly 500,000 taxi fares take place in New York City each day (Schaller, 2006). Yet, it is not the case that any one driver is guaranteed to pick-up any one of those fares. Indeed, throughout the course of the shift, there is a surprising amount of time that a driver rides empty.⁹

One place where a driver is guaranteed to secure a fare, however, is John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK).¹⁰ While JFK provides this certainty, it also provides a setting for driver sociability. There, drivers talk-shop, eat, and pray together. They play cards in the back of SUV-Taxis and backgammon and dominoes on top of wood panels covering garbage cans. They roll dice in those still unoccupied spaces in the lanes. As I waited alongside them at JFK for fares, I was able to speak with them out their experiences in this occupation.

During one waiting period, I spoke with Jamal, a middle-aged Moroccan man who had been driving taxi for almost 10 years. “You see how nice drivers are to one another here?” he asked rhetorically, as he scanned the lot with his pointer-finger. “The second you get out of here,” he continued, “forget about it, they are ready to cut your throat.” I nodded along, as we both observed a group of men walking and talking together. “But why do you think that is?” I asked. “Because it’s money,” Jamal replied. “You know, we work on 50 cent clicks,” he said, referring to the metered fare of a taxi ride. “It takes a lot of clicks to make rent.”

Yasser, a younger Egyptian driver who was standing nearby, quickly interjected: “This job changes you” he said, “Because you have to pay the lease, and the gas, you are ready to kill for two dollars.” Yasser continued, “When you drive taxi, the only thing you think about is making money.”

Indeed, what both Jamal and Yasser’s statements illuminate is that the economic risks associated with taxi driving do not go unnoticed by the drivers themselves. Rather, it confronts them and is measured with every click of the meter. Since drivers are uncertain of the next fare, there is a persistent unpredictability regarding their wages.

As Bogdan, a middle-aged Polish driver, explained:

You can always do this job, but that does not mean that you get paid. You can put in a lot of effort, and sometimes you make nothing for that effort. You can work for free, or even lose money after a 12-hour shift.

In fact, in the course of this ethnography, I experienced shifts where I lost money. For example, on one occasion, the fuel pump of my taxi required servicing, which interrupted my shift for 3 hours—for which my garage owner only took 9 dollars off the lease (it was 109 dollars a shift, at the time). After paying the remaining 100 dollars, as well as 30 dollars in gas for that day, I returned home with six dollars less than I had when I began the shift.

While drivers frequently expressed the risks of taxi driving in economic terms, they also spoke of the risks of taxi driving in terms of the lack of health benefits.¹¹ At a public hearing on a fare increase in July of 2012, the labor leader, Bhairavi Desai, summed up this type of economic uncertainty. She implored the TLC chairperson to consider what a lack of health benefits means for drivers:

Imagine going to your job day in and day out … [and] you don't have any benefits to call your own … [if] you face your own personal crisis, either due to illness or injury on the job … that keeps you from working … the idea that you have nothing to fall back on is absolutely unconscionable.

Although taxi drivers expressed the negative aspects of taxi driving (i.e., unpredictable wages, a lack of health benefits), I found that they often made sense of their work by expressing their sense of control over their work schedule. Drivers claimed that they could impose predictability on their time, and this predictability made taxi driving preferable to other low-wage jobs, which do not afford this type of control to their workers. The following represents a sample of this recurrent expression:

Yasser: “It’s a very difficult job, but that does not mean that I hate it … This is better than other jobs … I could find a job, in a restaurant or something … But here I can work at any time. I can stop at any time. I work whenever I want.”

Ali: “I never had a dream to be a driver … I worked in gas stations, kitchens, in a repair shop as a mechanic … With driving, there is the freedom to work when you want. You can take days off, and that’s why I like it.”

Bogdan: “There is a kind of freedom to driving. Like tomorrow, if I don’t want to work, I don’t have to go.”

Of course, not all drivers made sense of their work by expressing this sense of control, however. In fact, one driver stated, “If it is true that hell exists, then driving taxi is that hell.” Indeed, rather than speak of the freedoms associated with taxi driving, he spoke extensively about the long hours, low wages, and the potential of losing money on the job. “Some days you can make 20 dollars, or even 5 dollars … but, if the car breaks or something, or if you get a ticket, you go home and you lost money … It’s a really tough job.” He ended our conversation bluntly, “As long as I am surviving, I will be ok.”

In practice, there are constraints placed on a driver’s schedule control. The most obvious constraint is the 12-hour shift, which is often firmly policed by garage dispatchers. For example, I was once penalized $25 by my garage dispatcher for being 15 minutes late to hand over my taxi. Moreover, there is a constraint placed on the shifts that drivers work. For example, when I started my ethnographic work of taxi driving, I was not able to pick any shift that I wanted. Indeed, the more lucrative shifts (i.e., Friday and Saturday nights) already had drivers assigned to them at my garage. Instead, I was given the less lucrative day shifts on Monday and Tuesday, with the promise of getting a better shift with seniority. More still, the uncertainty of daily income places its own constraint on drivers. Economists have suggested that drivers tend to drive longer hours on days when there are less fares, in an attempt to hit an earnings target (Camerer et al., 1997). Finally, as independent contractors, if drivers do not work then they do not get paid.

Nevertheless, despite these constraints, I found that taxi drivers made sense of their work by expressing their sense of control over their work schedule. In what follows, I will show that while drivers stated that they are able to make a similar income in other forms of low-wage work, they maintained that taxi driving allowed for this critical freedom to control the timing and duration of their work. I argue that this freedom is significant to drivers in the context of their personal aspirations, as well as their social relations outside taxi driving. The result of schedule control is that drivers become invested the structure of independent contract work, which affords them those opportunities. In this way, the same work arrangement that brings about economically precarious work also provides mechanisms to generate worker investment.

The Significance of Schedule Control

Men-in-the-Making

On my first day of taxi school coursework, the instructor began the section by encouraging those driving applicants to continue their education. The instructor spoke favorably of the reasonably priced professional certification programs offered at the community college where the coursework was administered. Moreover, in noting the opportunity to pursue one’s education, the instructor made a direct link to the ability for taxi drivers to control their own work schedule. “The good thing about taxi driving,” he claimed, “is that it is flexible. You can come and go as you please.”

At first, I thought of the instructor’s suggestion to the class as peculiar. To be sure, those in attendance were in the process of securing employment. Yet, I found that schedule control would be significant for drivers who were pursing human capital development. In fact, later in that class one aspirant claimed that he came to taxi driving for this precise reason. The young man, Bae, was studying business management at the community college where the taxi coursework was taught. He said that he had recently quit a full-time job at a restaurant, due to the repeated scheduling conflicts with his pursuit of an education. Indeed, research demonstrates that restaurant workers often have to be flexible, which makes it difficult to commit to a classroom schedule or to stable patterns of child care at home (Halpin, 2015). Like Vic, Bae spoke of the benefits of schedule control and the time it would afford his studies. Throughout our conversation, Bae maintained a general enthusiasm regarding his future as a taxi driver and suspected that driving taxi would not be a “real job-job,” that imposed control by enforcing a when and a where.

While taxi driving has long been a refuge for those, like Vic and Bae, who wish to support themselves during their educational development, drivers with advanced degrees also noted the importance of the ability to control their work schedule. Samir held a master’s degree in telecommunications, but found it difficult to find a job, due to his lack of relevant work experience. “I handed in my resume. I went through the interviews,” he explained, “but you have to have experience. If you don’t, then forget about it.” Although he noted that the job was both physically and mentally exhausting, Samir claimed that leasing a taxi nevertheless afforded him an opportunity to gain the valuable work experience that had been otherwise difficult to obtain. He said:

Now, I am doing software testing. You find bugs or viruses in software. I am paying people to teach me, and after that they are going to find a job for me. That is a good job—70,000 dollars a year. For now, I am practicing, and driving a taxi lets me study.

As independent contractors, taxi drivers are able to make decisions regarding the number of hours that they work over the course of a shift. Scholars have shown (Ashenfelter et al., 2010; Camerer et al., 1997; Crawford & Meng, 2011; Farber, 2005, 2008, 2015) that taxi drivers often vary in their decisions on when to end a given shift. While these scholars argue that these decisions are made due to either narrow bracketing and loss aversion, or cumulative hours worked and proximity to the garage, what these statements illuminate is that this sense of latitude regarding the duration of one’s work is significant for some taxi drivers in the context of their personal aspirations beyond the world of taxi driving. Moreover, these statements illuminate that this form of control is meaningful in the context of other low-wage jobs (i.e., work in a restaurant), which do not afford the same latitude to their workers, and instead require that workers be flexible.

For drivers like Vic, Bae, or Samir, the ability to end a workday early or begin a shift late, in order to attend a class or study for a mid-term, allows them to gain the necessary human capital to compete in the contemporary labor market, and potentially secure a better job. Schedule control allows for them to frame taxi driving as a stepping-stone occupation and to see themselves as “men-in-the-making.”

The consequence of these choices, however, is that drivers have little long-term commitment to this form of work. Indeed, taxi driving is noteworthy for having a high-turnover rate (Hodges, 2007). A recent study, for example, found that only one-third of all drivers have been driving for 5 years or more (Schaller, 2006). As a result, I argue that the structure of taxi driving generates what scholars have referred to as effort rather than consent (Sallaz, 2015).

Family Men

While both native and immigrant drivers noted the ability to control one’s schedule, I found that it would have a particular significance for immigrant drivers due to their need to fulfill familial obligations abroad.

Jean began leasing a taxi after migrating from Haiti. He had been working as a driver for 10 years, and typically drives 7 days a week. “It’s a tough job,” he claimed. Jean bemoaned the long hours, waking up at 3:15 in the morning, the incessant traffic, as well as the pressures from the lease, police, and passengers. “It is all very stressful, but sometimes you don’t have a choice,” he asserted. “You see, I didn’t grow up here, and I didn’t go to school,” he continued, reflecting on the constraints he faced in the job market, “When I came to this country, I did not know English or anything.” Jean explained that prior to taxi driving, he had worked in construction. It was in relation to this previous work experience that he made meaning of taxi driving. He said:

With construction, you know how it goes, when you work for someone else, they give you two weeks vacation a year. If you take more time off, then you will need to find a new job. With driving, I can be my own boss. I have the freedom to do whatever I want.

Jean then explained why the ability to take time-off was significant for him. “My family is there,” he said, in reference to his native country of Haiti. “I usually drive for two or three months at a time and then I go home for 6 months,” he continued, “and then I come back for another two months, and then I go back.” When I asked if there was ever a problem securing a taxi when he returned to New York City, he replied confidently, “No, you can get a car whenever you want. There is always a taxi waiting.” To conclude our conversation, Jean summarized his perception of work in the following way: “You can have a good job and a miserable life. I may be working hard for those two or three months, but I get to go home. So, I have a good time every day.”

Several days after my conversation with Jean, Ibrahim, a Guinean driver of 7 years, related a similar experience of taxi driving. “I don’t like to drive,” Ibrahim said, to begin our conversation. Similar to other drivers, he noted the economic pressures he felt from the lease and the long hours he spends working to make a living. Like Jean, Ibrahim explained that the benefit of leasing a taxi was that he was able to return to his native country every year and stay for three or four months with each visit. A naturalized American citizen, Ibrahim said that he attempted to bring his wife and young son to the United States from Guinea on several occasions, but had been unsuccessful. Unlike Jean, however, who expressed a deep personal satisfaction in those return visits home, Ibrahim looked forward to the day when such excursions were no longer necessary. He said:

With this job, I can leave at any time, come back, and start driving again. So, that is the reason why I drive. It gives me that freedom. But if I had my family here, I would not drive. I would open my own business.

Ibrahim explained that he once owned a clothing store in the Bronx. A combination of meager profits and pressing familial obligations in Guinea forced him to close the store. “When my family finally comes here,” he said, “I will open my own store again.” But until then, he said, he will continue to drive a cab.

The fact that drivers take off for months at a time was also noted by several medallion brokers and “fleet” medallion owners that I spoke with throughout the course of the ethnography. One “fleet” medallion owner explained, “Immigrant drivers don't bring their wives and children with them. So, they go back for 3 months at a time with what they made, and then they come back.” The owner then placed this reality in the context of his own economic uncertainty, “It is my responsibility to figure out how to get drivers in the seats of my taxis 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”

As independent contractors, taxi drivers are able to make decisions regarding the timing of their work. As scholars have noted (Hodges, 2007; Mitra, 2003a, 2003b, 2009), the shift to the leasing system was accompanied by an increase in the proportion of immigrant drivers. In fact, 91% of all yellow taxicab drivers are foreign born (Schaller, 2006). What these cases illuminate is that for some immigrant drivers, the ability to control one’s work schedule is significant in the context of their social relations outside of the world of driving taxi. Moreover, this control is meaningful in the context of other low-wage jobs (i.e., work in construction) which do not afford this type of control to their workers.

For drivers like Jean or Ibrahim, the ability to take months off at a time affords them the opportunity to go home and fulfill necessary familial obligations. This control allowed them to see themselves as “family men.” The significance of these choices is that workers became invested in the structure of a work arrangement that makes those choices possible, thereby legitimating a work arrangement that produces economically precarious work.

Conclusion

This article has shown how independent contract work creates economically precarious work for New York City yellow taxi drivers, and has explored how drivers make sense of the economic risks they face each workday. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic data, it finds that taxi drivers made sense of their work by expressing a sense of control over their work schedule. It has argued that this ability to control one’s schedule serves as the basis for worker investment in the structure of independent contract work.

This article contributes to sociological theory and research in a number of important ways. The main contribution of this article is the finding that self-conceptions that drivers bring with them to the independent contract work matter for how they evaluate that work arrangement. In his work, Burawoy (1979) argued that the identities that workers bring in from outside the shop floor are irrelevant to their experiences of autonomy, and subsequently to their consent to the structure of work. By contrast, the findings of this article show the self-conceptions that drivers brought with them to this form of work interacted with the structure of the lease work arrangement to influence how they experienced schedule control, which generated their investment in the structure of that work arrangement.

This article expands upon this literature by focusing on how the experience of schedule control generates worker investment. I argue that this form of control is distinct from other mechanisms examined previously in the literature in that it does not derive significance from the status hierarchies on the shop floor or contained in the service triangle. Instead, the significance of this form of autonomy for taxi drivers derives from their personal aspirations and social relations beyond the workplace. In this way, this article expands on this literature by highlighting the variety of foundations for the generation of investment.

This article also contributes to a literature on worker engagement in the post-Fordist labor process. In his recent work, Sallaz (2015) argued that by decoupling the “learning game” from the reward structures, employers elicit short-term investment, with high rates of attrition. This article contributes to this work by showing that the short-term investment of taxi drivers is generated not by a learning game but rather by the structure of independent contract work that allows for them to control their work schedule.

Finally, the findings of this article also have implications for future studies of work in the “gig” or “sharing” economy. For example, drivers for “e-hail” or “ride-sharing” applications, such as Uber and Lyft, also work as independent contract workers (Hall & Krueger, 2015).¹² While drivers for those e-hail companies do not pay a lease to operate the application, or keep the full earnings of the meter—they are paid a commission from each fare (Goncharova, 2017)—as independent contractors, they are nevertheless exposed to uncertain and unpredictable wages, and lack health insurance, pension benefits, as well as formal job ladders for promotion. In this way, drivers for ride-sharing companies may also be engaging in economically precarious work, and their job may also be categorized as a bad job.

Yet, as independent contractors, drivers for e-hail applications also have freedom to control their work schedules. Interestingly, in a recent survey of 601 active Uber drivers conducted in December 2014, researchers found that workers reported that they decided to drive for Uber because of schedule flexibility associated with independent contract work. In fact, 87% of drivers said that they decided to drive for Uber because they wanted to “be [their] own boss and set [their] own schedule,” and 85% of drivers wanted to “have more flexibility in [their] schedule and balance [their] work with [their] life and family” (Hall & Krueger, 2015). Moreover, they found that 73% of Uber drivers would choose the ability to control one’s work schedule, over a steady 9-to-5 job with a set salary and fringe benefits. Indeed, they contend that individuals who value flexibility are the most likely to seek opportunities with Uber.

The findings of this survey, however, overlook key relationship concerns (i.e., visiting family, caring for sick or disabled parents or children) and activities for building their work experience or their educational credentials that require control over their schedules. Without a more sociological understanding of economic life, researchers run the risk of ignoring the relational structures that support the rhetorical markers of freedom, flexibility, and entrepreneurship in the new sharing economy. Self-conceptions give meaning to the experience of autonomy and of schedule control, but these conceptions do not operate outside of ongoing relationships between workers and their families, as well as the variety of jobs individuals are now taking on as their incomes and expenses become more volatile.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Nicholas Occhiuto is a PhD student in sociology at Yale University. His research interests include economic sociology, sociology of markets, organizations, occupations and work. His dissertation examines the impact of smartphone applications on the taxicab markets in New York, Chicago, San Fransisco, and Austin, in order to understand how innovations affect markets.

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