So – why did the ever-so-decisive Minneapolis City Council delay its “minimum wage” hike against Uber and Lyft to July?

To help the soon-to-be-unemployed drivers?

To give the companies a reasonable chance to adjust?

HAH. Naïve peasant!

It’s to save the DFL from itself!

The Minneapolis City Council, in voting unanimously on Thursday to delay enactment of minimum pay rates for Uber and Lyft drivers for two months, offered a lifeline for Democratic legislators embroiled in their own divisions over the issue.

Legislative leaders, who are trying to craft their own compromise that would increase driver earnings but keep Uber and Lyft in the Twin Cities metro, are increasingly concerned that the polarizing ride hailing issue could upend the remainder of the legislative session, which hangs on a one-vote majority in the Senate.

The council has come under immense pressure to reconsider their minimum rates since the wide-ranging effects of Uber and Lyft pulling out have become more clear: some 10,000 drivers likely losing income without unemployment benefits and tens of thousands of convention-goers, commuters, bar hoppers and people with disabilities needing to find different transportation.

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, and House Majority Leader Jamie Long, DFL-Minneapolis, met recently with a half dozen members of the City Council to request the delay and remind them of the stakes of a deal, as well as the city’s significant legislative agenda at the Capitol, according to several people present or briefed on the conversation.

So they found an issue where out-radicaling each other isn’t bringing them votes.

Weird. It can be done.

BTW, if I were the CEOs of Lyft or Uber, I’d tell the CIty Council to go pound sand unless they all came to my headquarters on their knees to kiss my butt on live television.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, April 12th, 2024 at 7:00 am and is filed under Business, The Economy and The Markets, Minneapolis, MNDFL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.