Truckers took to the streets of D.C. final week to name on lawmakers to finish the unfair practices of their business that locks drivers into poverty and debt, resulting in a manufactured trucker scarcity.
In case you missed it:
This isn’t like previous trucker protests, the place drivers slowed down site visitors, obtained flipped off by D.C. drivers and wished to arrest cops for forcing them to pissed themselves. These drivers had been with Truckers Movement for Justice, and so they took to the streets (on their toes, not their large rigs) on May 1 to listing their grievances of wage theft within the type of unpaid wait occasions and lack of additional time pay, the Guardian stories:
The group mentioned they met with senior officers from the DoT in 2021 as a part of Joe Biden’s trucking motion plan, a set of initiatives meant to extend the provision of truck drivers by creating new pathways into the career, however that they’ve but to see any motion on their three core calls for.
“We’ve lost our patience. This has been going for years and has only gotten worse with the lack of federal action. We don’t need taskforces and studies,” mentioned Fernandez, who additionally serves as deputy secretary for Truckers Movement for Justice.
Pay for truck drivers has dwindled in current a long time even because the business has persistently complained it cannot discover sufficient drivers. When adjusted for inflation, the typical pay for a truck driver within the US in 1980 was about $110,000 yearly, in contrast with about $48,000 right now. More than 2 million Americans work as truck drivers within the US right now.
Ray Randall, a truck driver for over 20 years who has labored throughout the US mentioned he had spent hours in line at ports, unpaid.
“Drivers should be paid detention time,” mentioned Randall. “We believe all drivers should be paid for all hours worked, because once you come on duty, you’re working. If you come to a shipper and have to wait, I’m working. Also, after 40 hours, companies pay employees overtime but drivers don’t get any overtime and we can put in 70-plus hours a week. We can be on duty 12 hours a day and we’re not getting paid for those 12 hours.”
Dang. According to the Guardian, actual take-home pay for truckers has fallen by greater than half since 1980. That’s for a harmful job that’s exhausting in your physique, thoughts and household. The trucking business jogs my memory an excessive amount of one other business which is at present working its most necessary employees ragged within the identify of income and to the drawback of security.
We’ve mentioned it earlier than and we’ll say it once more: The trucker scarcity is bullshit. Just like all each different business that insisted after the COVID-19 lockdowns that “no one wants to work anymore,” there is no such thing as a trucker scarcity with no pay scarcity. That’s regardless of the trucking lobbyist releasing more and more dire warnings a few trucker scarcity. The American Trucking Associations launched a press launch declaring America can be quick 80,000 drivers with out a lot problem from sure information shops.
Source: jalopnik.com