Cabbie tells of plum jobs and ’scraps’.

A cabbie claiming $100,000 damages for the way he says lucrative jobs are fed to a small number of favoured drivers says other drivers were left “fighting for the scraps”.

 

Three drivers from Hutt and City Taxis are suing the company, of which they are shareholders, in the High Court at Wellington, asking for damages and fair allocation of jobs.

Chandra Naidu said yesterday that company chairman Gerry Ryan was being “fed” well-paid jobs, along with a small pool of other drivers. “Everyone else is left fighting for the scraps.” Mr Naidu, who has degrees in computing and accountancy, became a company director in 2006 but said he resigned because of the way the company was run and that three of the five directors would not recognise the problem.

Two days after he became a director, he was rung and offered a job after he had logged off for the day. He questioned the practice and was not contacted again.

Mr Naidu said he worked 60 hours a week and became stressed because jobs were not shared equally and he was not earning what he should have been. Drivers should have had equal opportunity for good jobs under an automatic assignment system, but it was being over- ridden manually. The company’s lawyer has indicated the manual assignment of jobs can be explained.

Another driver taking the case said he did not know what lay behind the favouritism. “I could not say an agreement, but you are looking at a pattern of work going to certain cars,” Nelson Manak said.

The third driver claiming damages is Kamleshwar Singh.