A JFK airport taxi drivers’ strike protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration ban Saturday has caused hundreds of Twitter followers to push for a boycott of Uber for operating during the strike.
The action comes after Uber lifted surge pricing at the airport, The Washington Post reported, which taxi drivers and Twitter users saw as taking advantage of the strike to increase profits.
Lyft also continued operating during the strike but did not lift surge pricing and pledged Sunday to donate $1 million to the ACLU, which obtained a stay on the immigration ban and helped some refugees who had been detained get released.
A number of Uber customers tweeted they would now use Lyft instead of Uber because of Uber’s decision to lift surge pricing.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is serving on Trump’s advisory council, but is concerned about the ban and how it will impact his Muslim drivers. Kalanick promised to compensate drivers unable to work because of the ban and set up a $3 million defense fund for those impacted by the ban, KTLA reported.
HotAir.com is crying foul over the boycott, however, saying the NY Taxi Workers Alliance is trying to make Uber look bad because it is taking away business from taxi drivers, even when there isn’t a strike. The fact that Lyft got in on the action was more evidence to Hot Air that the boycott wasn’t purely about the issue at hand.
It is unlikely that a few hundred people deleting the Uber app will make much difference in Uber’s market share, HotAir contended. As of mid-2016, Uber has taken a sizeable bite out of taxi drivers’ usual market, with yellow taxi drivers in New York City alone falling at least 100,000 trips a day since 2015 and Uber increasing over 100,000 in that same time period, according to ToddWSchneider.com.
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