by Charles Walker

Feds Lengthen Truck-Driving Time, Bosses Cheer

Trucking bosses--with the active connivance of the federalgovernment--are set to squeeze even more sweat and profit from thelabor of their freight workers, both union and non-union. ComeJanuary, all freight drivers may be compelled legally to stay behindthe wheel for up to 11 hours, instead of the present 10 hours, a limitput in place in 1939. If that sounds outrageous because of the vastincrease in freight industry productivity in the past 60 years due tomodern highways and speedier and larger vehicles and trailers, thinkabout this: real wages for freight drivers are lower today than theywere in 1980. Teamsters' Union truckers earn nearly 20 percent less,and non-union drivers earn more than 28 percent less than they didalmost 25 years ago, according to industry analysts.

The onset of the loss of real wages (what the dollar actually buys )for freight workers, as well as American workers in general, coincideswith the strengthening of European and Japanese capitalistcompetition, once their war-torn industries were rebuilt.

Even before the projected lengthening of driving hours, the largelyderegulated US trucking industry had rightly been compared to asweatshop on 18 wheels. Most often paid by the mile, drivers cram100,000 miles or many more into a work-year. Federal statistics showthat truck drivers lead the nation in the number of occupationalillnesses and injuries requiring lost work time. While the number oftruck crashes per million miles may not be increasing, the number ofmiles driven is going up, increasing the likelihood of still moretruck related injuries and deaths.

Allowing a ten percent longer driving time is just the same ascompelling it, given the dog-eat-dog competition in the industry. Thisis sure to increase driver fatigue and that means greater danger onthe highways, says the Teamsters Union. The rank and file caucus,Teamsters for a Democratic Union, agrees, noting that the change inpermitted driving hours "benefits industry profits, not highwaysafety." The New York Times reported on April 25 that, "In 1990, aNational Transportation Safety Board study found that 33 percent ofcrashes in which truck drivers died involved fatigue. A study done inNew York in 1997 found that 47 percent of truck drivers reportedfalling asleep at the wheel some time in their driving career and that25 percent reported dozing off at least once in the previous year." Aspokesperson for a highway safety group told the Washington Post(April 24), "We are talking about a profession where fatigue is amajor safety problem. If airline pilots were falling asleep on thejob, I doubt we would add more time in the cockpit."

Many drivers fight the inevitable over-the-road fatigue with harmfuldrugs, at the same time that they try to counter falling real wages bydriving even longer than present regulations permit. The federalgovernment says it relies on drivers' logbooks to monitor drivers'hours, but it is common knowledge that drivers, even union drivers,falsify their logbooks, and that their bosses know it. For the fastgrowing number of so-called "owner-operators", who are their ownnominal bosses and who must earn a living as well as keep up theirtruck payments, the last thing on their mind is to pull over for someshut-eye when they are facing losing their investment in their truck. With the free market regulating competition, the downward pressures onearnings are also forcing workers to quit, a loss of over 100,000jobs, according to some analysts.

While trucking bosses generally hailed the longer driving time, it isclear that the bosses want still more leeway to change workingconditions. An Oklahoma trucking executive told the Times, "It's noteverything we wanted, but it is much better than we had."

WWW Washington Free Press