Drivers for ride-hailing services are striking Wednesday in major cities across the country in response to Uber’s upcoming initial public stock offering. They’re calling for a $28 hourly wage  —  $17 after expenses — healthcare, paid time off, and a driver bill of rights.

The movement began in Los Angeles, where driver organization Rideshare Drivers United is calling for a 24-hour strike on all ride-hailing platforms and picket lines at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).  Strikes are planned in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, and D.C.

But just what’s happening here, and whether it will affect local riders, is unclear.

Uber launched in the region in 2011, but drivers have not traditionally had much of an assembled organization or union. A newer group, Drive United D.C., popped up last fall.

That group has organized a protest Wednesday from 8:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), but they are not calling for a strike. The protest is at night since some drivers also have day jobs, says Jeffrey Dugas, an organizer helping with the effort.

“We’re not officially calling for a strike,” Dugas said. “This is our first public action, so we were better off going with a solidarity protest as opposed to a quote-unquote strike. But we do stand in full support of drivers striking and are amplifying calls for riders to not cross the picket line for full 24 hours.”

In a Facebook post, Drive United D.C. wrote that the top five Uber executives made $143 million last year, while half of Uber drivers in D.C. live below the poverty line.

“This is obscene. Come out Wednesday to tell Uber execs: it’s unacceptable for anyone to live in opulence while those who generate their wealth struggle to get by,” the post said.

In March, Uber cut driver compensation in Los Angeles from 80 cents per mile to 60 cents per mile, according to LA’s Rideshare Drivers United.

Stan De La Cruz, a founding member of Drive United D.C., has been driving for Lyft and Uber for three years and says he has driven more than 5,000 trips. In a press release, he said drivers’ livelihoods should not be dependent on the whims of tech CEOs.

“We deserve to be safe on the job, we deserve healthcare, and we deserve to earn a living wage,” De La Cruz said. “Many of us share the same concerns, which is why we’re calling on drivers to join us and demand that Uber, Lyft and other app-based corporations hear our voice.”

But in an unaffiliated D.C. driver community group on Facebook, many drivers seemed split on the issue.

In an informal poll, about 40 said they’d participate in the strike while more than a dozen others said they would instead capitalize on the increased demand resulting from the strike and make more money.

Other drivers posted that they just heard about the strike and didn’t know what time it was happening.

Virginia Democratic Socialist Del. Lee Carter (D-Manassas), who also drives for Lyft, is striking and called on riders not to cross the picket line.

https://twitter.com/carterforva/status/1125426529058664448

Katie Wells, a Georgetown researcher, recently released a study on the challenges of driving for ride-hailing services. But she says during her interviews, many drivers weren’t interested in organizing.

“They were happy to talk about the limits of the workplace and its challenges,” Wells said in an interview last month. “But as we asked questions about, ‘would you want to join a union?’ many of them said they were not in this for the long haul or that their job is disappearing anyway because automated vehicles are going to arrive.

“There was increasingly this sense of, ‘if the Titanic is sinking anyway, why would you unionize the engine room?’”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.