Atlanta Uber Drivers Say Robotaxis Are Already Cutting Into Their Pay
A driver union wants a per-ride fee on Waymo robotaxis, but a 2017 state law may leave Atlanta with almost no power to act.
What happened: The Atlanta Rideshare Drivers Union (ARDU) told city council members that Uber and Lyft drivers have seen lower pay, longer waits, and fewer fares since Waymo's driverless cars launched in the city in June 2025. One driver told CBS News Atlanta his earnings are down roughly 10 to 30% depending on the day. ARDU is pushing for a $0.50-$1.00 fee on every robotaxi ride to fund driver retraining, a ban on Waymo pickups at Hartsfield-Jackson airport, and caps on how many robotaxis can operate, backed by better public data.
Why it matters: Rideshare driving has long been a fallback job with low barriers to entry. If robotaxis are quietly eating into that income, it's happening to a workforce with no severance, no union contract protections, and largely no leverage. The union itself admits it has no consolidated data yet, just driver complaints and shared earnings screenshots, so the scale of the effect is still unproven. But the pattern matches driver protests already underway in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York.
How it works, plainly: Waymo's driverless cars in Atlanta aren't a separate competing app: they're bookable directly inside Uber, meaning they draw from the exact same pool of ride requests as human drivers. Since June, Waymo says it has logged more than 5.4 million fully autonomous miles in the city. Waymo points to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review finding no at-fault crashes in local data through mid-2025, and has floated a $20 million fund to help support drivers who lose income.
The rollout: Georgia's 2017 autonomous vehicle law (SB 219) blocks cities from capping robotaxi fleets, requiring local licenses, or charging per-vehicle fees, meaning Atlanta's council has little actual authority to grant most of what ARDU is asking for. The fight is bigger than one city: California Teamsters have sued over state rules favoring self-driving trucks, and New York drivers have gathered signatures pushing for a statewide robotaxi ban. Nobody has yet settled who compensates workers displaced by the technology.