On Monday, some drivers across Russia staged a quiet strike by staying off the road. They are demanding lower platform commissions and a higher minimum fare.
On December 15, taxi drivers in several Russian regions refused to work in protest against the terms offered by the platform. One driver described the main grievances to the Business FM.
According to him, Yandex Taxi charges commissions of up to 28% per ride, depending on the vehicle class. In addition, drivers pay 9% for the ability to work within their preferred area, another 9% for “on-the-way” orders — such as trips taken while commuting to work or running errands — and an extra 4% for the option to see the trip’s final destination in advance. Taken together, these deductions significantly reduce drivers’ earnings.
Drivers say a fair commission would be around 10%. They are also calling for an increase in the minimum fare and for destination details to be shown without additional fees.
Russia’s taxi aggregation market is not only effectively monopolized and controlled by a single company, but also heavily reliant on opaque pricing mechanisms that require reform, said Alexey Ivanov, Director of the BRICS Competition Centre. In his view, it is essential to ensure transparency in price formation not only for consumers but also for service providers — the other side of the platform.
“I am convinced that taxi drivers should work under comfortable conditions, but today their interests are effectively unprotected,” Ivanov said. “In the traditional labor–capital model, this role was played by trade unions, which helped balance corporate power. While that model later declined and became bureaucratic, it was fundamentally justified. What we need now is a rethinking of trade unions on modern principles, with transparency as the key condition — above all, workers’ understanding of how their income is calculated.”
Ivanov pointed to the example of Kazakhstan, where the Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition (ADRC) required Yandex Taxi, following an investigation in 2022–23, to disclose parts of its pricing and commission algorithms. The regulator also ordered the company to cancel commissions on orders that exceed twice the base cost of the fare, introduce additional bonus programs for drivers, and improve the user app to make fare calculations more transparent.
Compliance with these antitrust commitments is being monitored by a special ADRC monitoring group that includes experts from professional communities (representatives of initiative groups, ministries of transport, labor and social protection of the population, justice, digital development and innovation, as well as the Association of tax parks). This allows timely consideration of emerging challenges.
For platform-based business models — where one powerful, well-resourced corporation interacts with a large number of self-employed workers — a mediator to structure and regulate these relationships is critically important, Ivanov stressed.
“As Kazakhstan’s experience shows, a civilized way to resolve these issues is possible through institutional oversight that includes independent monitoring and direct participation by drivers themselves,” he said. “In today’s platform economy, where structures similar to trade unions do not yet exist, the antitrust authority is best suited to act as that mediator. Otherwise, the vacuum may be filled by less constructive forms of protest — and strikes are already the first sign of this.”
Antitrust regulators are particularly well positioned for this role because relations between platforms and drivers are closer to market relationships than traditional employment. Direct intervention by labor inspectors would likely force platforms to classify all gig-workers as full employees, undermining their business model.
An antitrust authority, Ivanov argued, can strike a delicate balance — preventing social unrest and worker dissatisfaction while preserving the “drive and entrepreneurial spirit that keep the platform economy moving.”
