Twin Cities rideshare driver Abdikani Ali warns that autonomous vehicles would undercut workers in his industry.

At the urging of workers and labor unions, the St. Paul City Council last week put the city on course to regulate autonomous vehicles before companies like Waymo and Tesla’s Robotaxi begin operating here.

The council passed a resolution Oct. 14 directing the Planning Commission to study the issue and send back recommendations for a regulatory framework that protects workers, prioritizes safety and accountability, safeguards people’s privacy and protects public transportation systems.

“We need to understand these impacts for ourselves – not take big tech’s word for it,” Council President Rebecca Noecker, who led efforts to pass the resolution, said at a press conference inside City Hall before the vote.

Already, Waymo vehicles are surveying Minneapolis and St. Paul streets, although human monitors still ride inside. The Google-owned taxi company currently operates in 15 U.S. cities. Tesla robotaxis have gone live in six urban areas.

Uber and Lyft drivers, who recently began organizing a union with Service Employees (SEIU) Local 26, have lobbied city leaders in both Minneapolis and St. Paul to act now, before autonomous vehicles begin commercial operations here, to prevent widespread job losses.

Minnesota’s rideshare industry generates over $500 million in total economic output, generating about $43 million in local and state tax revenues.

If local governments like St. Paul fail to act, Council Member Hwa Jeong Kim said, “hundreds of millions of dollars that today support working families across St. Paul would instead flow to Silicon Valley CEOs.”

Rideshare drivers like Abdikani Ali agreed. Ali supports his family by driving for Uber and Lyft, working as many as 16 hours in a day to make ends meet.

“I don’t want Waymo or Tesla to come into the St. Paul community and take away the jobs that people like me depend on,” Ali said. “I also don’t want the money and wages that we’re (earning) to leave our community and go to companies and corporations run by Elon Musk and Google.”

Council members in Minneapolis last month attempted to protect rideshare drivers’ jobs with an ordinance requiring autonomous vehicles to carry human monitors, but it failed to pass.

The resolution adopted in St. Paul, Noecker said, does not presuppose any policy outcome. Instead, the council is setting in motion a process that will seek answers from the community about what guardrails are appropriate. “The outcome of that could look a lot of different ways,” Noecker said.

The Planning Commission’s work is expected to take six months to a year.

“Our responsibility is to the people of St. Paul, not to these corporations,” Noecker added. “Depending on what our community tells us, there may be guardrails we can put in place that allow these vehicles to operate safely, but we need to do the work first. And we want to do that work now rather than wait until they are literally at our door.”

– Michael Moore, UA editor