Trucking Deregulation

* Harry Bernstein’s Column Left of April 10, about the replacement of striking workers, and the one on May 1, “Truckers Feel the Burn of Deregulation,” are right on the money. Every working American in this country owes the Teamster strikers a debt of gratitude for this last strike. At least for the next four years. The middle-class American and the American dream are just about gone with the deregulation of all industries (trucking, airlines, telephone, etc.). Corporations and foreign countries have been the benefactors of deregulation and corporate greed.

I don’t know what it will take to wake up the American people, but at some point we’d all better think about what the American dream will mean to our children and grandchildren. Not everyone can have a college education. If the working people don’t stand together, it will be a very long haul for the middle-class Americans.

GARY B. BROWN

Whittier

* My husband is a cross-country trucker. Over the past 15 years he has worked for several companies. The unwritten agreement in trucking is that the driver will work unlimited hours driving, and hundreds of unpaid hours counting and unloading freight.

When the average person accepts a job, he or she knows that certain rules will be there to protect them. Extra pay over eight hours, regular breaks and mealtimes, the availability of restrooms.

When you drive a truck these protections disappear. You are expected to drive day and night and work unloading when you get there. You hope for an hour of sleep before the next dispatch. If you turn down a load, due to fatigue, you may sit one or more days waiting for another trip, without pay. And in many cities it is illegal to park and rest. Drivers sometimes go 100 miles or more looking for a place to park.

To make matters worse drivers are paid according to the archaic “Household Movers Guide,” which pays miles from post office to post office instead of miles actually driven, allowing companies to cheat drivers out of thousands of miles a year.

The constant threat held over the driver’s head is replacement with even more desperate, cheaper labor, one of the reasons NAFTA was protested.

Most employers won’t do anything the law doesn’t require them to do. They will continue to exploit and abuse drivers as long as they are allowed to. Right now the law ends at the trucking industry’s door. All that drivers want are the same protections you enjoy when you go to work. When will they get them?

APRIL O’HARA

Anaheim