The taxicab religious wars
Some of the Muslim taxi drivers serving the Twin Cities airport want to be able to refuse service to customers carrying liquor or customers with dogs, including guide dogs for the blind. They say that transporting such passengers involves them in a violation of their religious beliefs. About 5,000 refusals have occurred in the past 5 years.
The Twin Cities International airport regulates and controls taxis that want to operate from the airport. Taxi owners are also charged a large license fee for the privilege of doing business there. The airport "stacks" taxis, and assigns them to customers in sequence. The current rules require a taxi to go to the "back of the line" if he refuses a customer (taxi drivers may refuse a fare who is intoxicated or appears dangerous). The airport wants more severe penalties for refusing passengers, including revocation of license for a second offense.
There are clearly rights involved in this dispute. Certainly, a taxi driver does have the right to refuse a fare, just as any other business has a right to refuse a customer. Freedom is, in essence, the right to say NO. If such a driver refused me service from any other location, he would lose the fare and waste his time and gas getting to my location before deciding to refuse my business. I would be inconvenienced by having to order another taxi.
The rights of the airport are a little fuzzier. The airport does have a right to control what happens on its property... to control traffic, and to provide convenient, speedy exit of taxi customers from the facility.
There is another player in this scenario, though, whose rights don't seem to even be discussed... the taxi customer who pays the fare. Can a customer legitimately refuse a particular driver for religious reasons? I could certainly come up with objections to the Muslim religion that I could use to justify refusing a Muslim driver. Personally, I wouldn't, because my objections are not important enough to me to complicate the situation... but if the driver has a right to refuse on religious grounds, then the customer should have the same right.
Refusals complicate life for the airport, of course, which would like to make departures as orderly as possible. They have enough crowd control problems without adding any, and bunching people up at the cab departure point is not desirable. Once we retrieve our bags, we have a very long walk to the taxi stand. Thank goodness for bags with wheels. Aside from refusals and the long walk, their system does seem to work well... you walk up, they point you to the next taxi, and you're off quickly once you get there. We do pay for that smooth system, of course... the big license fee gets passed on in fares, plus the long walk to the taxi area.
Once upon a time, cabs were waiting just outside the baggage area, and we just flagged one over. Refusals weren't an issue then... both drivers and customers would have been able to move on to another pairing. Like most uncontrolled systems, it was a bit chaotic, but it was faster and easier for everyone involved.
Because airports are "commons", "public" facilities, operating in a monopoly context, controlled by governmental agencies, these problems are stickier. In a given city, we have no choice of airports. Virtually all air travel is compacted into a single huge facility, which creates all sorts of congestion problems. Governmental and quasi-governmental operations tend to come up with systems that treat people as robotic groups rather than as individuals. Because they have no competition, they ignore the fact that everyone involved is an individual, and instead treat us as herds to be shepherded along in whatever way seems most efficient for the facility rather than the people. It isn't unusual now to spend more time at the airport, and getting there, than it is on your flight. We poke along for an hour or more, being examined and treated as potential terrorists, wait, then board a cramped plane, wait, taxi, wait in line for the plane's takeoff position, then speed off at 500 MPH to arrive and go through a similar maze at our destination. It's all fairly efficient for the airport, and for the airlines, and pathetically inefficient for those of us who are paying the bills.
We wouldn't put up with such nonsense if we had a choice, but the governmental monopoly eliminates choice and naturally results in treating the paying passengers like herd animals. Imagine any private business trying to treat customers in such a ridiculous manner. They would lose customers so quickly that such a system would vanish, either replaced with better systems, or replaced by a competitor with more creativity.
If the Muslim driver problem occurred in say, courtesy bus systems run by auto dealerships or hotels, it just wouldn't be tolerated. A driver who had a religious problem with passengers most of us would consider normal would just be ineligible for such a job. He would have to find different work. Each of us eliminates certain jobs from our personal list of jobs we're willing and able to take. As an atheist, would it make sense for me to teach Bible studies? I've studied the Bible and done a lot of teaching, so I am qualified to do it, but I would have a problem with that job. It would reasonably require me to say, or refrain from saying, things that my employer and I are not in agreement with. Neither of us should want that conflict..
Likewise, those drivers who cannot, based on their own conscience and beliefs, service any reasonable fare, should find work other than driving taxi. If they wish to offer their services with advertised exceptions to fares they will accept, they could perhaps find a niche in which to work. However, when they acquire a license to work at the airport, they must accept the airport's rules. To have a good contract, both the employer and employee (or contractor) should be happy with the arrangement, or be willing to terminate it.
The Twin Cities International airport regulates and controls taxis that want to operate from the airport. Taxi owners are also charged a large license fee for the privilege of doing business there. The airport "stacks" taxis, and assigns them to customers in sequence. The current rules require a taxi to go to the "back of the line" if he refuses a customer (taxi drivers may refuse a fare who is intoxicated or appears dangerous). The airport wants more severe penalties for refusing passengers, including revocation of license for a second offense.
There are clearly rights involved in this dispute. Certainly, a taxi driver does have the right to refuse a fare, just as any other business has a right to refuse a customer. Freedom is, in essence, the right to say NO. If such a driver refused me service from any other location, he would lose the fare and waste his time and gas getting to my location before deciding to refuse my business. I would be inconvenienced by having to order another taxi.
The rights of the airport are a little fuzzier. The airport does have a right to control what happens on its property... to control traffic, and to provide convenient, speedy exit of taxi customers from the facility.
There is another player in this scenario, though, whose rights don't seem to even be discussed... the taxi customer who pays the fare. Can a customer legitimately refuse a particular driver for religious reasons? I could certainly come up with objections to the Muslim religion that I could use to justify refusing a Muslim driver. Personally, I wouldn't, because my objections are not important enough to me to complicate the situation... but if the driver has a right to refuse on religious grounds, then the customer should have the same right.
Refusals complicate life for the airport, of course, which would like to make departures as orderly as possible. They have enough crowd control problems without adding any, and bunching people up at the cab departure point is not desirable. Once we retrieve our bags, we have a very long walk to the taxi stand. Thank goodness for bags with wheels. Aside from refusals and the long walk, their system does seem to work well... you walk up, they point you to the next taxi, and you're off quickly once you get there. We do pay for that smooth system, of course... the big license fee gets passed on in fares, plus the long walk to the taxi area.
Once upon a time, cabs were waiting just outside the baggage area, and we just flagged one over. Refusals weren't an issue then... both drivers and customers would have been able to move on to another pairing. Like most uncontrolled systems, it was a bit chaotic, but it was faster and easier for everyone involved.
Because airports are "commons", "public" facilities, operating in a monopoly context, controlled by governmental agencies, these problems are stickier. In a given city, we have no choice of airports. Virtually all air travel is compacted into a single huge facility, which creates all sorts of congestion problems. Governmental and quasi-governmental operations tend to come up with systems that treat people as robotic groups rather than as individuals. Because they have no competition, they ignore the fact that everyone involved is an individual, and instead treat us as herds to be shepherded along in whatever way seems most efficient for the facility rather than the people. It isn't unusual now to spend more time at the airport, and getting there, than it is on your flight. We poke along for an hour or more, being examined and treated as potential terrorists, wait, then board a cramped plane, wait, taxi, wait in line for the plane's takeoff position, then speed off at 500 MPH to arrive and go through a similar maze at our destination. It's all fairly efficient for the airport, and for the airlines, and pathetically inefficient for those of us who are paying the bills.
We wouldn't put up with such nonsense if we had a choice, but the governmental monopoly eliminates choice and naturally results in treating the paying passengers like herd animals. Imagine any private business trying to treat customers in such a ridiculous manner. They would lose customers so quickly that such a system would vanish, either replaced with better systems, or replaced by a competitor with more creativity.
If the Muslim driver problem occurred in say, courtesy bus systems run by auto dealerships or hotels, it just wouldn't be tolerated. A driver who had a religious problem with passengers most of us would consider normal would just be ineligible for such a job. He would have to find different work. Each of us eliminates certain jobs from our personal list of jobs we're willing and able to take. As an atheist, would it make sense for me to teach Bible studies? I've studied the Bible and done a lot of teaching, so I am qualified to do it, but I would have a problem with that job. It would reasonably require me to say, or refrain from saying, things that my employer and I are not in agreement with. Neither of us should want that conflict..
Likewise, those drivers who cannot, based on their own conscience and beliefs, service any reasonable fare, should find work other than driving taxi. If they wish to offer their services with advertised exceptions to fares they will accept, they could perhaps find a niche in which to work. However, when they acquire a license to work at the airport, they must accept the airport's rules. To have a good contract, both the employer and employee (or contractor) should be happy with the arrangement, or be willing to terminate it.
posted by Robert Ronald Smith at 8:14 AM
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