Driving a Taxi in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh District Council are very particular
about who they will issue taxi operator and taxi driver licenses to,
the Licensing Department does the actual issuing, but each applicant
is first checked by the Lothian and Borders Police. In fact, the
department which oversees the day to day running of the taxi trade,
the Cab Office, is headed by a full Inspector of Police - the dreaded
Cab Inspector! (actually he's a very reasonable man, prepared to
listen to your side of the story if you are called in to see him).
Just as in London, each taxi driver has to pass an examination on the
streets, hotels, Official buildings, etc., before the City Council
will license them to ply for hire.
Before any applicant is granted a license - known as a 'brief' - they have to produce a written offer of work from a Taxi operator, this presumably is to ensure that there are not too many people holding briefs just so that they can come out and drive when they need a few pounds extra. There are four main radio companies in Edinburgh, Central, City, Radiocabs and Capital/Castle, the other small company is Edinburgh taxis with the rest of the fleet operating as 'street' cars i.e. no radios, just picking up in the street or from ranks.
Radiocabs and Capital/Castle are both owned companies, that is the company directors actually own the office and the radios, and the taxi operators merely hire the use of the equipment from the company without having any real say in the running of it.
Central and City are organised rather differently, they are both set up as co-operatives i.e. the owners of the company are the taxi operators themselves. This means that the operators have a vested interest in seeing that the company is being run properly and that any decisions made take the long term future of the company and the taxi trade into consideration.
Don't, however, let this mislead you into thinking that when you step into a taxi the person in the front actually owns the taxi, he might be the owner but is more likely to be a self-employed driver. These drivers are usually either "on rental" (hiring the taxi from the owner for a set fee with everything they make over that sum being theirs), or "on the clock" ( not paying for the use of the cab, but splitting the takings with the owner, normally 50/50. - Any tips going straight to the driver).
This is where I come into it. I've been a driver on the same cab since I got my brief and at the moment I'm working constant night shifts, but this is open to change. So there's no absolutely certain way to avoid the possibility that the driver of the taxi you flag down might be me, short of checking that you never take a Central taxi.
As a member of the Edinburgh Cab branch of the Transport and General Workers Union I think that I ought to give it a mention here. This branch of the Union is newly formed and has not yet managed to achieve a large membership due to the nature of taxi-drivers - a suspicious and individual bunch of characters - but we hope to attract more members by the simple means of showing that the benefits of joining together as part of a national organisation are well worth the money.
Back to the Taxi page.
