Post by Amadan on Jun 30, 2017 12:50:05 GMT -5
Rigged. Forced into debt. Worked past exhaustion. Left with nothing.
Summary: Truckers carrying shipping containers on the short hops from port to local warehouses in Los Angeles have been systematically exploited by the companies that make up this hidden niche (but vital) segment of the industry. Reminiscent of old "company town" schemes - the abuse is pretty blatant and horrific.
It was prompted recently - 2009 in fact - by California mandating that all the old trucks that had previously been used for this kind of shipping be replaced with newer, cleaner ones. That meant the shipping companies had to replace a few hundred million dollars worth of trucks, and came up with the brilliant idea of passing that cost on to the drivers, who basically traded their old trucks in for new ones that they "leased" - and if they ever get fired, which they can be for any reason at any time, they immediately lose the truck and however many years of payments they've put into it.
Libertarians have been defending all this as (a) the result of Big Bad Government and its horrible environmental regulations (which forced all the trucking companies to create a system of indebtured servitude in response) and (b) perfectly fine because the drivers (most of them poor, often not English speakers) voluntarily signed the contracts.
In (minimal) defense of the trucking companies: their margins are very thin. Those environmental regulations probably did impose unintended consequences in that the shippers had to take drastic measures to stay in business. Creating exploitative near-slavery conditions for their drivers was obviously a bad solution, but it's easy to see how they fell into it, especially since once a few companies were doing it, no one else trying to pay fair wages and offer decent working conditions would be able to compete.
Summary: Truckers carrying shipping containers on the short hops from port to local warehouses in Los Angeles have been systematically exploited by the companies that make up this hidden niche (but vital) segment of the industry. Reminiscent of old "company town" schemes - the abuse is pretty blatant and horrific.
It was prompted recently - 2009 in fact - by California mandating that all the old trucks that had previously been used for this kind of shipping be replaced with newer, cleaner ones. That meant the shipping companies had to replace a few hundred million dollars worth of trucks, and came up with the brilliant idea of passing that cost on to the drivers, who basically traded their old trucks in for new ones that they "leased" - and if they ever get fired, which they can be for any reason at any time, they immediately lose the truck and however many years of payments they've put into it.
Libertarians have been defending all this as (a) the result of Big Bad Government and its horrible environmental regulations (which forced all the trucking companies to create a system of indebtured servitude in response) and (b) perfectly fine because the drivers (most of them poor, often not English speakers) voluntarily signed the contracts.
In (minimal) defense of the trucking companies: their margins are very thin. Those environmental regulations probably did impose unintended consequences in that the shippers had to take drastic measures to stay in business. Creating exploitative near-slavery conditions for their drivers was obviously a bad solution, but it's easy to see how they fell into it, especially since once a few companies were doing it, no one else trying to pay fair wages and offer decent working conditions would be able to compete.
