Motorists had to be patient this Monday morning on the Toulouse ring road (Haute-Garonne) where VTC drivers are organizing a snail operation to protest against the too low price of races on booking platforms.
Leaving around 7:30 a.m. from Sesquières, north of the Pink City, the procession, of around 90 vehicles according to the Haute-Garonne prefecture, considerably slowed down traffic by linking Ponts-Jumeaux, Boulevard de l’Embouchure then the airport from Toulouse-Blagnac where they were stationed around 10 a.m. The demonstrators left towards Compans-Caffarelli at the end of the morning to make their anger heard in front of the headquarters of the Uber platform. At 2 p.m., drivers were still occupying Lascrosses and Maréchal-Leclerc boulevards.
On the VTC vehicles mobilized Monday morning in Toulouse, some displayed their demands such as “Respect our work, increase our prices”. For Brahim Ben Ali, general secretary of the FO-INV union which initiated this operation, “the drivers are demanding an increase in the platforms’ price scale. An agreement provides that drivers’ remuneration cannot be less than one euro per kilometer. This is the minimum guarantee of hourly income from activity but this agreement is not respected. Today, we drive at a loss, at 50 cents per kilometer, to the glory of the platforms.”
The union also calls for the elimination of false profiles on the platforms and an end to registrations in order to limit the number of VTC drivers, an already precarious profession. Determined to make themselves heard, the VTC drivers voted at noon on Monday to continue their movement, establishing a new snail operation in Toulouse on Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning.