A group of workers along the canal downtown has begun discussing whether to organize, the Gazette has learned, after several members discovered they had been engaged in a work stoppage for some time without having agreed to one.

The group met Sunday afternoon on the sidewalk near the Steeple Street footbridge, lying in a loose row that extended past the railing and partway into the crosswalk. Attendance was strong. A count conducted by the Gazette found eleven present, none standing.

"We didn't call it," said a spokesman, on his side near the curb. "We just noticed we'd stopped."

The workforce is one of the city's larger and least discussed. Under the Shared Micromobility Program, run by the Department of Public Works, permitted operators are responsible for distribution, maintenance and parking, and pay for the privilege — the original 2018 pilot set the rate at a dollar a day per permitted unit, with a cap of 300 across the city and nightly collection required. Later permits raised the allotment to 600, required a fifty-dollar endowment per unit against property damage, and set a rule that any unit left on private property or in the river be resolved within two hours.

No member of the group could recall when the nightly collection last occurred.

Demands have not been formulated. Several members said the meeting was premature, since organizing typically follows a grievance and the group had not been able to identify one. Others disagreed. "We're on the ground all day," said one, "and nobody has asked us to do anything. At some point that's a position."

The question of whether the stoppage constitutes a strike was debated at length and not resolved. A strike, one member noted, requires the withholding of labor that has been requested. The group has been on the sidewalk since at least the spring and has not, to anyone's knowledge, been requested.

The employer has not been notified, in part because the group is not certain which of three companies it works for. Two members believed they were with the same operator and were not. A third declined to say.

The Department was not consulted and has not commented. Its published rules address the group's situation only as an obstruction of the public right-of-way, a classification the group considers an insult and also, on reflection, accurate.

A second meeting is planned for the same location. Members expect to be there.