The War on Waymo - by Dan Chiolan - Prof G Media
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Extra Credit<br>The War on Waymo<br>The autonomous vehicle rollout is about to get a lot more complicated
Dan Chiolan<br>Jun 03, 2026
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Every year, more than 36,000 Americans die in car accidents. Compared with human drivers, Waymo’s autonomous vehicle (AV) technology results in 92% fewer serious accidents, suggesting it could prevent many of those deaths. But after a year of the company operating eight cars with zero accidents in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani let Waymo’s testing permit expire anyway. When asked why at a press conference, Mamdani made his position clear:<br>“Look, if a company like Waymo finds itself in New York City, what they will also find is a City government that is committed to delivering for the workers who keep the city running, and those workers also include our taxi drivers who, for far too long, have been sold a dream of being able to work their way to the middle class, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.”
To translate: The mayor of New York City will not let technology companies automate the work of taxi drivers and rideshare drivers. He won’t be the last politician to take that stance.<br>Hit the Brakes
For as long as autonomous driving has existed, there has been organized resistance to it. Mamdani is not an outlier — he’s the latest and most prominent face of a movement that has been working for nearly a decade to slow, stall, or stop autonomous vehicles from replacing human workers. That movement has a name, a headquarters in Washington, D.C., and 1.3 million members: the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, America’s largest private-sector union and the most powerful force standing between autonomous vehicles and the open road.<br>Nearly a decade ago, the Teamsters successfully lobbied Congress to exclude autonomous semitrucks from legislation that paved the way for autonomous vehicle testing. Four years later, in 2021, they shut down a bill that would have relaxed federal autonomous vehicle rules. In 2023, the Teamsters backed a California bill that would’ve required human drivers in all autonomous trucks. The bill made it past the state Legislature, but Gov. Newsom vetoed it.<br>As autonomous driving develops into more serious technology, so do the Teamsters’ efforts to halt it. Last year, the conflict intensified when Teamsters Local 25 called on Waymo to pause their planned Boston rollout altogether.<br>“Waymo is steamrolling into cities throughout our country without concern for workers or residents,” said Local 25 President Tom Mari at a rally outside of Boston’s City Hall. “They’re doing this because they want to make trillions of dollars by eliminating jobs.”<br>As of now, Waymo is continuing their testing in Boston despite the Teamsters’ opposition. Under the current Massachusetts permitting process, all autonomous vehicles need a human operator behind the wheel. There’s currently a bill in the Massachusetts State House that would change this — but it’s been met with a competing Teamsters-backed bill that would officially codify the requirement for human operators. It’s unclear how or when this conflict will be resolved, especially as Waymo continues to ramp up its lobbying spend.
What is clear, however, is that these legislative battles are not one-off events. They’re the beginning of what will be a long path to seeing autonomous vehicles on the roads of all 50 states. And for good reason — the Teamsters have a point. Job destruction is coming.<br>Driver Destruction
Since ride-sharing services began popping up in the early 2010s, they’ve become the backbone of the gig economy. According to Deloitte, about a third of the American workforce participates in the gig economy. From there, it’s estimated that at least a quarter of American gig workers drive in some capacity, whether that be delivering food, groceries, or humans. Autonomous vehicles put all of these jobs at risk.<br>If we zoom out to include other driving occupations, it gets even worse. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are roughly 440,000 taxi and limousine drivers, 460,000 food delivery drivers, 1.5 million small-package delivery drivers, and 2.2 million long-haul truckers. That’s a total of 4.6 million jobs.<br>Driving is also the most common occupation among young men without a college degree, by far. All of this means that, as you read this, nearly 3% of the American workforce is in the crosshairs of Big Tech.
Nearly all of those occupations are, in some capacity, represented by the Teamsters union. The transportation sector as a whole has a union penetration rate of about 14% — a minority, obviously, but still more than double the rate of the private sector in total.<br>The Teamsters’ fight against autonomous driving is important not only to its members but also to its very existence. If the Teamsters begin bleeding members due to automation, they’ll start losing dues, which would place pressure on the...