Paris taxi drivers are working 66 hours a week for €5.50 an hour
Oliver Gee - [email protected]
Published: 2 Dec, 2016 CET.
Updated: Fri 2 Dec 2016 17:16 CET
The typical Paris taxi driver works a whopping 66 hours a week and earns just €5.50 an hour, a new study has found.
Maybe it's time to stop being so hard on the Paris taxi drivers, as Parisians very often are.
A new study from research group "6t" has found that Paris cabbies are working extremely long hours while scoring very few rides.
Cabbies effectively work "11-hour days, six days a week and take only three weeks of holiday a year", the study reported.
"They work twice as much as the French 35-hour week."
And the cabbies said they took an average of 11 trips per shift, which means just one per hour.
Photo: David McKelvey/Flickr
Add the fact that their average ride last just 22 minutes and it works out that the average cabbie hasn't got a passenger for about two thirds of their working day.
To make matters worse for the taxi drivers, the typical salary for those who haven't yet managed to pay off their exorbitant licence is just €5.50 an hour, compared to €13 for those who have paid it.
The price of a licence - which is up to €240,000 - has long been a bone of contention between cab drivers and their arch rivals Uber drivers, with cabbies complaining that they're stuck with a mortgage-like repayments to make while Uber riders get off scot free.
This is a key reason the cab drivers went on strike so often during this summer, sometimes getting violent with Uber drivers in the process (see photo below).
Photo: AFP
This week's study from "6t" also revealed a few key facts about the typical cabbie, based on the 1,000 in Paris they interviewed.
Around 98 percent of those quizzed were men, and the typical age was 48 years old (compared to an average of 40 years old across France).
Some 23 percent of drivers lived in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis in the northern suburbs of Paris, while just 22 percent lived in the city centre.
While the study may leave some feeling sorry for taxi drivers in Paris, there are many reasons we can speculate as to why Parisians often seem to loathe the city's cabbies - with everything from rampant tourist trickery to forced cash payments being the norm. Read more here.
Photo: AFP
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Maybe it's time to stop being so hard on the Paris taxi drivers, as Parisians very often are.
A new study from research group "6t" has found that Paris cabbies are working extremely long hours while scoring very few rides.
Cabbies effectively work "11-hour days, six days a week and take only three weeks of holiday a year", the study reported.
"They work twice as much as the French 35-hour week."
And the cabbies said they took an average of 11 trips per shift, which means just one per hour.
Photo: David McKelvey/Flickr
Add the fact that their average ride last just 22 minutes and it works out that the average cabbie hasn't got a passenger for about two thirds of their working day.
To make matters worse for the taxi drivers, the typical salary for those who haven't yet managed to pay off their exorbitant licence is just €5.50 an hour, compared to €13 for those who have paid it.
The price of a licence - which is up to €240,000 - has long been a bone of contention between cab drivers and their arch rivals Uber drivers, with cabbies complaining that they're stuck with a mortgage-like repayments to make while Uber riders get off scot free.
This is a key reason the cab drivers went on strike so often during this summer, sometimes getting violent with Uber drivers in the process (see photo below).
Photo: AFP
This week's study from "6t" also revealed a few key facts about the typical cabbie, based on the 1,000 in Paris they interviewed.
Around 98 percent of those quizzed were men, and the typical age was 48 years old (compared to an average of 40 years old across France).
Some 23 percent of drivers lived in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis in the northern suburbs of Paris, while just 22 percent lived in the city centre.
While the study may leave some feeling sorry for taxi drivers in Paris, there are many reasons we can speculate as to why Parisians often seem to loathe the city's cabbies - with everything from rampant tourist trickery to forced cash payments being the norm. Read more here.
Photo: AFP
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