INTRODUCTION: ‘ALL THIS FOR $8 AN HOUR’

‘Assault, abuse, fare evasion, 12-hour shifts, poor security. All this for $8 an hour.’ So ran the quote that was highlighted on the front of the May Day 2008 edition of the Age. The main city intersection in front of the clocks at Flinders Street station had been occupied for 22 hours by hundreds of taxi drivers paying respect to a fellow driver who had been stabbed and abandoned by a passenger. The drivers demanded the state government compel taxi owners to fit driver safety shields that would offer some protection from assaults. As was the 23 year old victim, many of the protesters were among the estimated 5000 Indian students working in Melbourne as part-time cabbies to generate the income needed to live and study in Australia. Though it was cold, the young men stripped to the waist and threatened to parade totally naked through the streets to highlight the physical vulnerability of those who labour in a lowly paid occupation in which workers must provide for their own occupational health and safety insurance. According to the Victorian Taxi Directorate this is a dangerous occupation, requiring drivers to ‘work alone, work at night, work long shifts increasing the risk of fatigue, work in isolated and high-crime areas, have cash on hand and always deal with strangers’.