A Letter to Our Customers
Excuse me. We need to talk. We hope this letter can be an opening to a fruitful dialogue we Chicago cabdrivers need to have with you, our passengers, with which we have a mutually beneficial and rewarding relationship.
After all, you need to go places quickly and efficiently, on time and safely. We can do that for you. And we need to earn a living, feed our families, go to school, pay our mortgages, pay taxes to support the public weal, and be productive members of our society. And you can, and do, help us do those things. Believe me, we are grateful.
We in the United Taxidrivers Community Council, a new organization dedicated to improving our working conditions and improving our human rights to respect, dignity, safe working conditions and a living wage are of the firm opinion that a person who does not have an abiding interest and a heart which finds sustenance in providing a public service to the people, does not last long in our industry. We believe it is part of the job, to have this desire. Sure—we get paid, but so many of us do so much more. I’m sure many of you can attest to this, if you search your memories.
Enough about us. Now we are going to ask you to do a hard thing. We are currently involved in a serious struggle to obtain a position of collective bargaining with the City of Chicago to address our many grievances.
They are too many and too complicated to go into here in this document, but we hope to achieve some positive press and news articles that will address some of our deeper issues in the near future. Please keep your eyes peeled for them. The Reader may be publishing an article soon that will illuminate some of what we are hinting at here. Call them and ask them when they will publish it. You can also ask your cabdriver for a copy of our own newsletter, the UTCC Voice, which contains some news about our working conditions and our issues.
-Peter Enger, Secretary of the UTCC
