UTCC Voice: Newsletter of the United Taxidrivers Community Council (Online Edition)

I took a visit to Los Angeles over Thanksgiving week to visit my daughter—and also to pay a visit to the folks in the Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance.

We here in Chicago in the UTCC had recently had some contact with Professor Jacqueline Leavitt of UCLA, the author of a study of Los Angeles cabdrivers several years ago. She had come in to Chicago and interviewed some of us, and in return, I thought we should pay a visit to our brothers in LA.

Chicago cabdrivers! It’s been too long since we spoke to you! The United Taxidrivers Community Council has been extra busy and hard at work building a strong and solid organization to benefit the hard-working Chicago cabdriver community.

Cabdrivers are demanding stricter safety measures and stringent enforcement mechanisms for attacks against cabdrivers after another driver was brutally attacked in late January.

CHICAGO- A ground-breaking study called “Driven Into Poverty” conducted by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Center for Labor and Employment Relations (UIUC-CLER) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) finds that Chicago cabdrivers are chronically overworked and underpaid close to the point of “economic failure.” Earning an average of only $4.38 an hour, few (6%) can afford to work an 8-hour day, while

When I heard some drivers were receiving tickets at the O’Hare parking lot while they were praying in the shelter, I knew I had to do something about it, especially I after I received such a ticket. I went home and I wrote a few lines in the form of a petition to protest such action by the Aviation Officers at O’Hare. In the following two weeks, I collected 1,400 signatures and I submitted them to the Commissioner of Aviation during a meeting with city officials at O’Hare.

Thomas Gniadek, the batterer in the case of Stanley Shen, entered his voluntary guilty plea in criminal court and was found guilty by Judge Gaughan.

His sentence was 10 days in the House of Corrections (time served, considered served), plus 364 days of probation together with a fine of $500 and $30 per month for probation costs.

In 2006 leaders from the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC) urged the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to publically respond to the violent murder of taxicab driver Haroon Paryani.

My name is Tracy Luedke, of Northeastern Illinois University here in Chicago. I am a professor of cultural anthropology.

As a cultural anthropologist, I am interested in the ideas, activities, and relationships that make up people’s experiences of the world. I have done field research in Mozambique (in southern Africa), studying and learning about the networks and organizations of traditional healers and their practices.

We members of the UTCC have been working hard to address the many serious issues facing our Chicago cabdriver/worker community here in Chicago.

Workers Compensation

Surprisingly enough, a recovery can be made at the Illinois Workers Compensation Commission without the help of a lawyer, although it is unlikely that a cabdriver on his or her own is going to do well.

The basics can be found on the web page of the IWCC, and if a cabdriver is without internet access or savvy, he or she can to the same State of Illinois Building to the 8th floor to get pamphlets and all kinds of help from the staff who are fantastically helpful.