And the entry-level trucking companies, the ones who will actually train you, are the most exploitative of them all. Trucking’s become like the military, an employer of last resort for people who have no other options. Right now a lot of people suddenly have other options.

You leave out the other side of the equation, which is that people living near ports had far higher rates of respiratory problems than people elsewhere, due to the pollution from all those old trucks.

Maybe he should tell them to invest whatever they’re paying consultants into their current workforce.

I work at a place that has had a lot of people leave. The COO had an all hand’s meeting to ask for suggestions on keeping and attracting employees.

Yeah, it’s this whole new-age fascination with making everybody an “independent contractor” to avoid providing regular pay or benefits. It’s complete and utter bullshit, and now we’re starting to see it all fall apart.

globe spanning industries exist to obfuscate who is getting that money and how much

The price of everything already increases, might as well let someone other than fat cats get paid along the way.

Yes, but par for the course. 

Bullshit. Worker productivity is way up in the last fifty years, but their portion of the earnings way down.  The bloat is with the parasites skimming all the cream, and that's where it needs to be taken back from. 'Same as it ever was.'

Fuck this. Every other first world country has no problem paying workers fair wages and costs are far from higher. I can go to Europe and make 22 bucks an hour working at McDonalds with 5 weeks paid vacations and better benefits, and the cost for the food is roughly the same

Sure, and as soon as the federal government directly intervenes you’ll be screaming about government overreach or socialism or any other lunacy.

It’s not strictly speaking an issue of pay. What they need to do is to take the risk out of driving trucks. When they made truck drivers ‘contractors’ , the trucking companies basically had the drivers themselves shoulder all the risks and ups and downs of the business. Who the heck wants that? People, especially…

What is the ever loving fuck do they have to do with the problem?

Not to mention the endless shifting of risk to the workers. No we won’t cover your reasonable expenses. You work for yourself, not us so you figure it out. This isn’t unique to trucking either. You’re right. If they keep screwing the little guy over and over, they’ll be lucky if all they do is walk away.

I doubt that Mercedes meant it that way. The greed is from the companies that hire drivers and refuse to pay them enough to keep them on the job. The independent contractor bullshit also gives the drivers no security, and low pay + no job security = everyone who can work elsewhere telling the employers to eat shit.

It’s the same across all professions, from warehouses to engineers, SOMEBODY is making a lot of money but it sure as hell isn’t the average worker.

I don’t know who I heard say it, but they said it best, “Employers love to talk supply and demand until it comes to labor.”

Despite federal regulations mandating rest periods for drivers, shipping companies still require delivery times that just don’t fit in with the real world. I’ve known a lot of truckers who talk about having to drive tired or wired to make their deadlines. It’s an area that can use more federal and union intervention.

It’s as if generations of wage suppression across the entire economy are suddenly being blown apart by a collective refusal to take any more of it.