#Have to hit space bar drivers#
Mr Taylor said users could work 12 cumulative hours, provided there was an eight-hour break before their next shift, and that Uber “didn’t track what drivers are doing when they’re not online”. Uber’s fatigue management system also came under fire, with Senator Sheldon quoting a finding that despite Uber supposedly booting drivers off the app after working 12 hours, 37 per cent of NSW rivers worked shifts exceeding that limit. Uber and Deliveroo both agreed there was always work to be done in the safety sphere. He said he knew anecdotally that drivers/riders could do deliveries for multiple platforms at one time, thus increasing their hourly rates of pay. Mr McManus also made the point that most drivers/riders who were using Deliveroo were also using other apps, like Uber Eats, Door Dash and Menulog, and due to the nature of the gig economy, had the flexibility to choose which jobs they performed. “I’ve not seen your studies, but just because an academic says something, doesn’t mean it’s true,” he said. Mr McManus said safety was a complex area, and that he did not agree there was a direct link between the two. Senator Sheldon said it was “quite disturbing” Mr McManus hadn’t seen the report he was quoting, and asked whether he agreed on a base level that sharing data on riders earnings with a federal regulator would be helpful in addressing road safety issues. While Senator Sheldon quoted findings that low rates of pay were linked to unsafe work practices, Deliveroo disagreed on the assumption that not only were their drivers well paid, but that the link was subjective. In addition, he said the International Labour Organisation had performed an “extensive review” of literature that linked payment and safety, and questioned whether delivery drivers were so desperate to make enough money to live, they were engaging in unsafe road behaviours, which could culminate in accidents, injury and death. Senator Sheldon first quoted a Transport Workers Union survey which looked at 200 riders, finding the average hourly rate of pay was between $10-$15. In 2020, five food delivery workers died within the space of two months in NSW, culminating in a demand for improved state and federal safety measures.įronting the joint select committee on road safety on Wednesday, both Uber and Deliveroo faced a grilling by Senator Tony Sheldon, who quoted academic findings that low rates of pay could be linked to road accidents. It is such a pleasure to meet you.Uber and Deliveroo have hit back at claims their apps were “incentivising unsafe practices” and that there was a link between their rates of pay and road safety. “Dear Broadway,” he begins, all wide eyes and eagerness. Connolly is instantly hilarious, writing a cover letter to send with his script. Mitnick also opens the play with a scene that may be prohibitively tough to perform in a way that makes emotional sense: a blackly comic monologue in which his father tells Kyle, who’s not quite 4, that his sister has just died.īut a moment later, the lights come up on the teenage Kyle, and Mr. “Spacebar,” which is presented by ARS Productions at the Wild Project, gets cartoon-broad and a little meanspirited in its second half, when Kyle grabs his backpack and jets off to New York to make his dream come true. Mitnick on the musical “Fly by Night,” which they wrote with Kim Rosenstock. Connolly, who this year collaborated with Mr. Mitnick’s play moving - that and the unfaltering performance by Mr. Kyle doesn’t just want his play produced on Broadway: At least as badly, he wants his dad to look out his Midtown window and see Kyle’s name, unignorably huge, on a billboard.īut the heart of Kyle’s play is about a father’s longing for his lost child. Starring the excellent Will Connolly ( “Once”) as Kyle, it’s a coming-of-age comedy about a Colorado drama geek yearning for his father (Christopher Michael McFarland), who’s left the family and moved to New York. “Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman” is, in reality, a sweet, silly, semi-unwieldy Off Off Broadway play, written by Michael Mitnick ( “Sex Lives of Our Parents”) and directed by Maggie Burrows. At 16, he is a lanky, rumpled elf of a boy, with an earnest intensity to charm the most jaded of hearts. But if he did, we would urge you to take him under your great white wing immediately. If you’ve been checking your mail, you may have noticed that he’s sent it three times - all several hundred pages of it. Hey, Broadway! Kyle Sugarman has a play called “Spacebar” that he’d like you to read.