Cabbies baulk at $20 Cup 'gouge'

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A taxi company's attempt to charge its drivers a higher fee during the Rugby World Cup backfired yesterday when the drivers walked out in an impromptu strike.

About 20 drivers for Mt Roskill-based Cheap Cabs walked out for about 90 minutes at 10am after being told the day before that the company was charging them an extra $20 a week for the remaining five weeks of the World Cup.

Owner Carol Ramsay gave the drivers no advance warning of the fee or any reason for it, although similar $25 fees charged at Christmas and Easter were said to be to cover extra staff time.

"All I can see is this is money gouging," said Esira Nawaqalevu, 63, who has driven for various taxi firms since the 1970s and has never been charged an extra fee by any other company.

The mainly immigrant drivers stood outside the Cheap Cabs office for more than an hour, ignoring repeated requests by a company official to go back to work. They said they had not seen any extra business from the World Cup yet to cover the extra $20.

The drivers are among the lowest paid in Auckland, earning between $140 and $600 a week after expenses, because Cheap Cabs markets itself as the city's cheapest taxi company. For example, it offers a fixed-price fare of $35 from the city to the airport even though the meter clocks up $51 on that route on the normal variable fare.

"Those fares were done several years ago when fuel was $1.30-$1.40. Now the fuel prices are $2.10. That's why the drivers are really struggling," said Vinay Kumar, who works the maximum allowable 70 hours a week to bring home a net $600 for his wife and 4-year-old son.

Spokesman Allaudin Kabani, 62, said most drivers took home only $400 to $500 a week for about 50 hours. They already pay the company a standard fee of $85 a week plus $10 a week for a new "panic button" system. Former bus driver Isaac Leilua, 45, of Kelston, takes home only about $300 a week after expenses for his family.

Shane Daniels, 57, of Pakuranga, gave up his job as a rigger after a back injury and joined Cheap Cabs three months ago. He can't work more than eight hours at a stretch and has only $140 left after expenses for a 40-hour week.

"My wife pays the bills," he said. "The $20 levy is ludicrous. We are not getting any extra work from it, and we certainly were not told about it before yesterday. It just popped out of thin air."

But Ms Ramsay said the levy was to recoup some of the costs of installing security cameras and panic buttons in the cars. The cameras did not work at first and the company had to pay for an exemption until they were fixed. It also paid for 120 hours in extra staff time to teach drivers how to programme the panic buttons.

"We are a business," she said. "We have one of the lowest upfront levies, that is because we focus on a very low cost to the drivers so they can go and charge very cheap fares."

An executive member of the Taxi Federation, John Bryant, said he did not know of any other company charging an extra fee for the World Cup because most firms were owned co-operatively by their drivers. His company, South Auckland Taxis, charges drivers a monthly fee of $450.