Drivers, long shifts and displacement

Waymo is adding cities and rides fast, but the jobs picture is still human and unsettled. (waymo.com) The company said on February 24, 2026 that it opened fully autonomous ride-hailing to public riders in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, bringing its commercial metro areas to 10. Waymo’s site now says riders can also hail its cars through Uber in Austin and Atlanta. (waymo.com 1) (waymo.com 2) Waymo said in May 2025 that Waymo One was already providing more than 250,000 paid trips a week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin. Its official blog said last week that the service now handles more than half a million paid trips each week across 10 United States cities. (waymo.com 1) (waymo.com 2) A driverless taxi does not mean a company without workers. Waymo says its fleet response team can give a vehicle extra context in unusual situations, while the car still performs the driving task itself. (waymo.com 1) (waymo.com 2) That distinction moved into Congress in February 2026, when Reuters reported that Waymo defended its use of remote assistance personnel and said those workers had never been used to drive robotaxis in United States on-road operations. Waymo told Senator Ed Markey that it had not used remote driving or “tele-operations” to perform driving tasks. (usnews.com) Labor groups are treating the expansion as a jobs fight, not just a technology rollout. Axios reported on March 18 that Minnesota unions were pressing lawmakers to slow Waymo’s entry because they see driverless vehicles as part of a broader struggle over the future of work. (axios.com) The same argument is surfacing in Illinois. WTTW reported on April 7 that unions there warned autonomous vehicle legislation could threaten some of the roughly 100,000 rideshare drivers in the state, even as Waymo began testing in Chicago with human drivers behind the wheel. (wttw.com) Waymo and Uber are presenting a different case in Atlanta and Austin. Uber says the partnership is building a market where autonomous vehicles and human drivers work side by side, and Atlanta’s June 24, 2025 launch covered about 65 square miles of the city. (uber.com) (cnbc.com) The labor question is landing while Waymo is still relying on layers of human support around the vehicle. Reuters reported in February that Markey and Representative Buddy Carter asked about remote personnel, including some based in the Philippines, as lawmakers pushed for more detail on how these systems operate in edge cases. (usnews.com) Safety remains part of the argument on both sides. Waymo says its safety data hub is updated in line with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reporting timelines, but federal records also show the company recalled 672 fifth-generation automated driving systems in June 2024 over software and map issues that could leave a vehicle unable to avoid a pole-like object. (waymo.com) (nhtsa.gov) So the debate is no longer about whether robotaxis are arriving. In April 2026, they are already carrying passengers in a growing list of cities, while drivers, unions, regulators and the companies are still arguing over which human jobs disappear, which new ones remain, and how long that transition lasts. (waymo.com) (axios.com)