The independent servant: A socio-cultural examination of the post-war Toronto taxi driver

The thesis explores the significance of occupational identity of, and for, Toronto taxicab drivers during the regulatory regime of the Metropolitan Licensing Commission, 1956-1998. The study uses municipal records, union papers, and local newspapers to identity four critical spheres of contention between the state and the drivers over their occupational identity. The struggle between the regulators and the workers revealed that cultural values such as obedience, honesty, and respectability were inextricably linked to economic values, such as the price of taxi licenses and lease fees. Efforts by the state to control the cultural values linked to the image and identity of taxi drivers profoundly affected material conditions within the industry including the form and structure of taxi companies, the employment relationship between the companies and the workers, and the working conditions of the drivers. Similarly, changes to industry structure, such as the demise of traditional cab companies and the shift to owner-operated vehicles profoundly affected the identity of taxi drivers by altering their status as employees and restricting their ability to access state-legislated protections and benefits including employment standards and collective bargaining. The thesis documents the active resistance of drivers to controls that dictated their attire and the use of meters, their efforts to gain collective bargaining rights as dependent contractors, and their tactics for coping with three decades of unprecedented crime rates. The study examines four critical battlegrounds in the dialectic of taxi driver identity: industry corruption, employment class, rising crime, and continuing education. In doing so, it finds that during the forty-two-year tenure of the Metropolitan Licensing Commission, the link between the identity of taxi drivers and the coveted image of Toronto repeatedly dictated regulatory policy at the expense of the drivers. Toronto taxi drivers were alternately punished for damaging the reputation of "Toronto the Good", saddled with responsibility for creating a "world-class city", and ignored on issues, vital to them, that were not seen as relevant to the municipality's quest for respectability and growth