Senior reps from all orgs, will be attending a meeting today, hosted by the RMT at Unity House.
But there is only one org that actually had funds to make a sizeable bent in the fight against the TfL/Uber's strangle hold on our trade.....and the sad fact is, they held on to their 'War Chest'.
The evidence was always out there:
In 2012 TfL were made aware of Uber's bookings system but they didn't check, they took Uber's assurances .
In 2013 Clifford Chance wrote to TfL again about Uber's booking system....TfL again accepted Uber's assurances.
TfL then undertook the TfL Model investigation, Garett Emmerson said in TfLs eyes Uber were more of a price comparison website.
At no point did Uber have to demonstrate that their system was compliant and legal, TfL took Uber's assurances at face value.
At one stage, Taxi Leaks pointed out to TfL that Uber were operating from unlicensed premises in N1, with their operators licence issued to an addressed in Old Marylebone Road (Winchester House).
TfL gave Uber 6 weeks grace to get a licence variation. Any other operator would have been shut down immediately under the standing legislation.
And yet the truth was, Uber weren't operating from any address in London, but from servers in Holland!!!
We had the lies from TFL's 'Leon the Liar', it's not a meter, they have on/off insurance, they have a customer help phone line....
The Times and Sun, simultaneously broke the story of Uber driver's fake medicals.
Last year the Sunday Times broke the news that 13,000 Uber drivers had fake DBS certificates and TfL had known but swept it under the carpet
We were told all drivers would have to reapply, but this didn't happen.
Then at the employment tribunal, it came out again, that Uber's bookings are taken by the driver in vehicle and TfL never so much as batted an eyelid!
If/when Uber lose their appeal, the orgs will be falling over themselves shouting "it was all our work".
But the truth is it was the hard work a just handful of ordinary, unpaid militant drivers, supported by those who actually turned up at demos, who fought tooth and nail to expose the corruption.
Our full respect must go to the unsung (unpaid) heroes, such as the three drivers who acquired and sorted through the hundreds of FOI requested emails, showing TfL knew exactly what was going on and bent over backwards to help Uber cover up its compliance issues. With the help of a supportive journalist they managed to get Inspector Bellany's letter published in mainstream media.
This evidence has been put out there and yet the trades most of the trade's orgs have gone along with the instruction of let's wait and see....
As we run out of time, we can only hope that this meeting will be the springboard to take the orgs together in the same direction.
TAXI LEAKS EXTRA BIT :
Let's also look at the wonderful 'done deal' over the mandate of CC acceptance.
On average, Taxi drivers are currently paying between 3.5 and 4.5% in transaction charges, with news that charges may soon be going up....and yet TfL, who insisted we take cards, and can only use TfL approved service providers, pay only 1% on their contactless transactions on Tubes and buses. [Who can forget deputy Mayor Isabel Dedring's words "the Taxi trades transactions will be handled by our gold standard partners].