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As work conditions go, the transition from licensed taxi cabs to the rideshare model represented a significant step backwards for drivers in the US. Stable wage jobs became “side gigs,” while human managers were replaced by labyrinthine algorithms. And forget fleet maintenance — under the new model, disenfranchised drivers were now responsible for their own vehicle’s upkeep, and all the financial burdens that come with it.
Yet with robotaxis from brands like Waymo and Tesla spreading through US cities like wildfire, even the Uber-fied gig economy is starting to become untenable for workers. Rising in its place is the “robotaxi handling” industry, bring with it contract jobs that are somehow even more grueling than the rideshare gigs they’re replacing.
A startling interview with an anonymous Waymo contractor by Bay Area Current details precisely how degrading these jobs can be. The worker, identified only as a “Robotaxi Handler,” outlines a poorly organized jobsite where incognito enforcers routinely snitch on undertrained contractors on behalf of management. Oh, and there’s poop to clean — lots of poop.
Starting off, the handler clarifies that although their work is for Waymo vehicles, they actually report to a third-party company called Transdev US, which handles the messy logistics behind the autonomous cabs. (Neither company commented on Bay Area Current‘s interview.)
Per the worker, Transdev’s hiring process amounts to a kind of Soylent Green approach to human resources, in which dozens of contractors are rounded up sight unseen, onboarded en masse, and then culled from the herd when they inevitably fall behind.
“There’s no interview process,” the worker explained. “They weed people out over time based on whether or not you can keep up with that process and adapt really quickly.”
After that rapid-fire orientation, workers can be assigned to various Waymo facilities all over their home city, with job duties rotating on a daily basis.
“Who gets placed in those specific jobs gets decided by managers the day of,” the robotaxi handler told Bay Area Current. “So your job changes every day depending on how much experience you have, how long you’ve been there, and how friendly you are with the managers.”
Sometimes those roles involve troubleshooting — updating software, cleaning sensors, and uploading Waymo data to company servers. It also includes unsticking Waymos when they clog up traffic, which is becoming a frequent occurrence in San Francisco. That can put workers in a precarious situation in which they have to choose whether to follow company orders not to interfere with a piece of tech still in its infancy.
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