Facing huge fees and strict rules, Kansas City transit drivers launch union bid

In the predawn darkness outside his Kansas City home, Bakar Mohamed starts a car emblazoned with a purple IRIS logo.

He does a quick check: headlights, engine, tire pressure. His wife and two kids, aged 2 and 4, still have hours more to sleep when he pulls out of the driveway around 4:30 a.m.

Mohamed worked for four years as a truck driver before a friend told him about the IRIS transit program , Kansas City’s microtransit initiative that launched in 2023. The advertised pay rate of $37 per hour was appealing, as was the promise that drivers could choose their own hours.

“The recruiter painted a rosy picture of how it’ll be like to work at this company,” Mohamed said. “He said things like, you can make up to $100,000 a year, and be your own boss. And I was sold.”

But Mohamed and other drivers say they soon found that the steep fees, close monitoring and strict policies embedded in the IRIS program leave them earning less than half the wage they were promised — or even ending the day in debt to zTrip , the nationwide taxi company that runs the program under a contract with the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority.

Around 120 drivers, IRIS passengers and union allies rallied outside of zTrip’s East Side headquarters on Thursday, Oct. 10, to launch the drivers’ campaign for a union. To form one, the company must first recognize them as employees rather than independent contractors.

The conditions under which IRIS drivers work stand in stark contrast to the city’s bus drivers, who are unionized through the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1287 . RideKC drivers receive benefits, a pension and overtime protections — but as bus routes get cut in municipalities around the metro, organizers say IRIS is replacing union jobs with low-wage work.

What conditions do IRIS drivers hope unionizing will solve?

ZTrip charges drivers like Mohamed $95 per day to rent their vehicles — even on days when they aren’t driving for the program.

“On Sunday, (the car) just sits there. It doesn’t go anywhere. But I still have to pay $95,” Mohamed said.

Then there are the vehicle-related fees: $25 per week for insurance, $11 per month for cleaning, and up to $50 per day in gasoline — drivers pay for their own gas. They must also pay to use the touchscreen tablets installed in the cars, which connect them to riders through the IRIS app. ZTrip charges drivers a $200 tablet deposit plus $5 per week to use the device, Mohamed said. The company also takes a flat fee of $89 out of drivers’ first paychecks to cover their pre-hire drug test.

Finally, drivers pay a processing fee four times a week in order to receive their paychecks. IRIS driver Darian Hall told the crowd gathered Thursday that he pays upwards of $50 per week just to get paid.

All these fees mean that drivers work for hours each day just to make up the negative balance they start with — and some even end the day still in debt to the company. Many, including Mohamed and Hall, drive for IRIS six days a week to make ends meet.

“For me, that comes out to about 65 or 68 hours a week,” Mohamed said. “If I were to work any less than that, financially speaking, I’d be a lot more in the red than I am now.”

Hall added that he works 10 hours per day, six days per week and has been donating blood plasma for the last three months to supplement his income.

These long weeks don’t come with overtime pay: Drivers’ classification as independent contractors exempts them from overtime protections. But unlike those who drive for rideshare apps, Mohamed said IRIS drivers work preset shifts that are assigned by the company.

“It’s not like Uber or Lyft where you can just pick (riders) up whatever time you want to work,” Mohamed said. “Once you’re locked in for a schedule, if you leave early or something, then the next day they’ll take you off the schedule, sort of punishing the driver.”

Drivers also have no input in which rides they accept. Instead, the IRIS app and human dispatchers match riders to available vehicles without drivers’ input.

Mohamed recalled picking up one passenger who asked probing questions about how much cash was kept in the vehicle and another irate rider who made him feel unsafe. His fears aren’t without basis: In mid-September, an IRIS driver was robbed and shot while picking up a passenger, putting him in critical condition.

IRIS vehicles are also equipped with cameras, which drivers say are used to monitor them on the job. Mohamed said he once parked at a gas station to use the restroom during a 12-hour shift. He was only out of the car for a few minutes when a dispatcher called him, asking why he wasn’t out on the road.

The road to unionization

In order to win a union, IRIS drivers must first be recognized as employees of zTrip rather than their current classification as independent contractors.

The thin semantic line between the two classifications has been a subject of contention for other rideshare programs, including those run by private companies like Lyft and Uber. IRIS drivers argue that zTrip’s tight control over their schedules, routes, vehicles and payment makes the company effectively their employer.

ZTrip CEO Bill George disagrees.

“No, they’re independent contractors. That’s our model, it’s a model used around the country, it’s the model of how they work,” he said during an unexpected appearance at Thursday’s rally. “Now, if the city wants to mandate that they’re employees, that’s fine. We work for the city, the city controls this contract.”

City Councilmember Eric Bunch and Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw both spoke at the rally in support of the unionization effort. Parks-Shaw told The Star that she plans to look into the treatment of drivers further, but no plans currently exist to make city funding for the IRIS program conditional on specific employment terms.

“Because we are using taxpayer dollars to fund this program, I will make sure that I investigate to ensure that they are paid fairly,” she said.

George argued that, even after the company’s fees are deducted, IRIS drivers already make a decent wage.

“Independent contractor drivers, on average, net over $29 an hour,” he said, displaying a graphic on his phone purportedly showing an hourly net wage of $29.05 for a driver with the initials M.A.

When asked which driver the graphic represented, George named Mohamed, whose initials are B.M. Mohamed said that after fees, his hourly pay comes out to around $14-15 an hour.

If drivers can succeed in being reclassified by the company, a successful union vote is organizers’ next goal. ZTrip could then recognize their union voluntarily — something George said his contract with the city requires him to do.

ZTrip describes itself as “the largest taxi fleet operator in the U.S.” and reported revenues of $68.1 million in 2021 . Its parent company, WHC Worldwide , retains former Kansas City Assistant City Attorney Patricia R. Jensen as a lobbyist , according to filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission .

IRIS as a stopgap for bus service

The debate over IRIS’s efficacy as a transportation solution for Kansas Citians comes during a troubled time for traditional bus service in the metro. RideKC bus routes have already been cut in Blue Springs , Gladstone , Raytown and Grandview , and plans to reduce service in Independence and Kansas City, Kansas are in the works as well.

Some of the Kansas City area cities that have cut routes say IRIS provides an alternative to buses.

“The City of Raytown has elected to end fixed-route transit service and replace the Flex service with IRIS on-demand within the city on July 7, 2024,” KCATA wrote in a news release on June 11, 2024. “To fill in gaps in service, the IRIS On-Demand service will be available in Raytown.”

Mohamed makes trips to and from Raytown often — sometimes picking up riders from a former bus stop, its blue pole still embedded in the sidewalk.

But experts have found that microtransit programs like IRIS aren’t equipped to replace mass transportation.

For one thing, IRIS rides cost riders $3-10 per person per trip, whereas RideKC buses are free — for now .

The nonprofit public transportation think tank TransitCenter also noted in a 2019 report that microtransit costs municipalities significantly more per rider than traditional bus service.

Gwinnett County, Georgia, which is part of the Atlanta metro area, pays around $15 per passenger per ride for its microtransit program. In Los Angeles, the “Metro Micro” program costs the city’s transit authority $43 per ride. And in 2022, Jersey City’s Via microtransit program — started under now-Kansas City Manager Brian Platt — cost the city a total of $7.5 million.

TransitCenter notes that these high costs to municipalities are typically funneled into private third-party companies like Via, Transdev and zTrip, diverting resources from more efficient methods of public transportation.

“Each dollar spent on microtransit is a dollar agencies can’t spend on more cost-effective strategies to increase ridership, like adding frequency on major routes or improving bus stops,” the organization wrote in its 2019 report.

“U.S. transit agencies seeing sustained ridership growth, like Seattle and Houston, aren’t doing it with microtransit — they’re increasing service, giving transit priority on the street, and making network-wide improvements.”

Despite starting his day at 4:30 most mornings, Mohamed rarely makes it home before the early evening. Often he only gets an hour or two with his toddlers before they need to go to bed.

“My parents came to this country to give us a better life. But this isn’t the American dream that I thought that I’d be living,” he said. Nevertheless, he fights through the exhaustion from his 12-hour shifts to connect and organize with other IRIS drivers.

“Being with this company has definitely shown me that I can’t wait for other people to make changes,” he said. “I have to do it myself.”

Do you have more questions about transportation or unionization efforts in Kansas City? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com .