Important lessons from Uber taxi drivers strike

My first job after campus was as an instructor with Outward Bound. Outward Bound does experiential training. By dint of that, I was privileged to train some batches of military cadets.

During that season in my life, I noticed something that was not only peculiar, but very interesting. You could tell where a soldier was by what he complained about: far from the front lines he would complain about cold food, warm beer, and old movies. Near the front lines his complaint would change drastically; if you ask the soldier what he needed, he would say, “Give me more men, give me more ammunition, give me more air support.”

The soldiers who were far from combat had their mind on civilian affairs. Their concerns were for their comfort, not their safety. Yet when they were confronted by the immediacy of danger, they became single-minded; their sole purpose was to win the battle. Their minds and even their bodies become vigilant, taking on a readiness that belonged to the front lines.

My observations underscored the radical difference between how we celebrated Uber’s entry into Kenya; jobs were created, an industry was disrupted and we were over the moon. But I watched drivers of the online taxi hailing company go on strike last week.

To start you off, let me first give you a bit of history.

Uber came into the country in January 2015. Within a month, it had signed up nearly 1,000 Kenyan drivers onto its platform.

By mid-last year, the company also announced that it had clocked eight million kilometres in Kenya. It was a firm of the digital age. Consumers were empowered by their devices. They could check prices and reviews in real-time, and broadcast their experience - good or bad - to the world. They were active participants in the transaction, not passive recipients of marketing messages.

So what changed?

There are two things that I think happened. The first was the typical Kenyan “Simu ya Jamii” syndrome. You make an emotional decision to get into a business because others are getting into it. You see, as humans, we are emotional beings, and no matter how rational we might think we are, we are often going to be in situations where we make emotional decisions about our investments.

Take the example of deciding which house to buy, your emotional side may get wrapped up in ideas bringing you back to the type of house you grew up in, where you experienced familial love, good memories and positive relationships with family. Thinking about buying a house like your childhood one makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, and you may start looking at houses like that, even if they’re more expensive than what you can afford.

The emotional side tells you that you’ll be happier in that type of house, and in the end you buy a bigger house than you can afford because your emotional side told you you’d be happier in that house. The truth is you could probably be happy in a much smaller house.

Yet I will be the first one to tell you that it is extremely difficult to be the ‘rational’ investor in an irrational environment. And I’m talking from experience. You need to take your view from a time, discipline and comfort perspective.

The second factor is another Kenyan phenomenon. The Uber drivers did not read the fine print. If they did, they would have realised that they voluntarily signed up as independent contractors. Not as employees.

My dear readers, contractors don’t get minimum wage protections, overtime or unemployment insurance.

If you incur any work expenses in the course of duty you are on your own.

Think of it like this, it was Uber’s ability to sidestep those obligations that enabled them to “disrupt” the car service economy.

As things stand now, the only certainty that exists is that the headlines and stories will keep coming. Watch this space.