Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Anti-Uber protests lock down Paris”.
All over France taxi drivers are causing violence and blocking roads in protest of uber. One of the writers from the verge on our tour actually loses in Paris and he’s gon na tell us what’s going on yeah. Well, actually, it’s a strike organized by a bunch of French taxi unions, so taxi drivers who are upset primarily over the fact that over Ober pop, which is ubers like low cost service – and this has been something – that’s been kind of brewing for a long time. So there was a law passed in December of last year, like that basically said that all chauffeurs, including taxi drivers and also kind of private car services, have to adhere to these rules and regulations which, on the face of it, makes it seem like uber, should have To apply to that as well and uber pop technically still is illegal, but is allowed to exist because uber kind of appealed, the ruling, so they maintained their a technology company and not a car service or transportation company. So therefore they shouldn’t have to adhere to these rules. It’S been kind of this gray legal space for a long time and it everything kind of boiled over today and the taxi drivers are primarily upset because because we were pop employees, kind of amateur drivers or non-professional non licensed drivers, they don’t have to pay a lot Of the licensing fees that typical taxi drivers have to pay which can be up to, like you, know nearly $ 300,000 for the moment, there’s no end in sight. This seems like the government is trying to appease things.
And/Or appease the taxis by this call to ban uber pop, which seems to me like they’re, hoping that that’ll bring things to an end, but when they announced this strike normally they announce strikes you know for trains or airport or for airport, or things like that. They’Ll give like a definite timeframe, but they didn’t do that in this place, like they said like it’s unlimited, which is, you know, have not a very good sign for anybody. Looking to travel, .