Uber has been operating in Chile for nine years. It was the first company of this type of service to which others such as Cabify and Didi have joined. Always under the complaints of traditional taxi drivers, who claim to have to meet a much higher standard to work. With the aim of regulating applications that informally offer passenger transportation, the Government of Gabriel Boric is ad portas to implement a law, known as the Uber law, to level the conditions that digital platforms that offer these services must meet. And, of course, the debate with the drivers is on. From academia, there are those who question the regulations due to the consequences they could have on employment rates.
The imminent entry into force of the regulations of Law 21,553 has had the drivers of these transportation applications battling with the left-wing Administration to make the conditions more flexible and delay its application, scheduled for this year. Drivers will be required to have a professional driving license, be registered in the Official Registry and that the car used meets a series of characteristics mainly related to its age. At the beginning of January, the Government delivered the legislative document to the Comptroller's Office, the body that supervises the State Administration, for review and approval, which can take up to six months.
The Minister of Transportation, Juan Carlos Muñoz, has tried to put a cold shoulder to the discussion, communicating a series of modifications last week in Congress. The displacement of the cars, which was previously 1.4 liters, was now added “or its equivalent”, under the argument that there are internal combustion vehicles that, having a slightly smaller displacement, show similar power. The age of the cars for a first registration went from requiring that they be new to one year. Regarding those who currently operate with the applications, the regulation changed from a maximum of seven years to 10. Finally, the freeze on car registrations, which will operate from the entry into force of the law, will affect only drivers, and will not to vehicles and drivers, as initially.
The Application Drivers Union (Sincapp Chile), which brings together nearly 600 members, has requested that the document from the Comptroller's Office be withdrawn and the deadlines be extended to comply with any new requirements. It reported that about 40% of its members were left off the registry for not meeting future standards and that 67% of its members work full time and the remaining 33% use it as supplementary income.
89% of drivers
A study carried out by the Observatory of the Economic Context of the Diego Portales University (OCEC-UDP) estimated that, when the new regulation is applied, 88.9% of those who today are dedicated to transporting passengers through these applications will have to stop working. . There would be 35,992 people, of which 18,787 are Chilean and 17,135 are foreigners. In addition, it estimates that the aggregate unemployment rate would rise by 0.4 percentage points. These calculations were made before the modifications presented last week, so the figure should decrease.
To reassure the sector about the speed of the times, Minister Muñoz said that once the Comptroller's Office approves the document, there is one month to process it for it to come into force. Then, companies will have six months to register their drivers in the Official Registry and during the first 12 months a professional driver's license will not be required from those registered, which should give them time to regularize their situation.
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