We have a shortage of good jobs in trucking
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Illustration: Peter and Maria Hoey
 
Dear reader,
The story of our broken supply chains is a story about our broken labor laws. In 1980, Congress deregulated the trucking industry in a way that made driving a truck a demonstrably worse job. Truckers, especially those who service our nation’s ports, are increasingly classified as independent contractors, with no minimum salaries or benefits, no health insurance, not even bathroom privileges at the ports. They pay for gas, maintenance, rig insurance, and repairs themselves; and they’re only paid for the time spent delivering goods, meaning that the time waiting in line inside the port complex is uncompensated labor.

This, not the mythical concept of a “trucker shortage,” is the reason for the inability to get goods to businesses. We have no shortage of people willing to drive trucks, just a shortage of good-paying jobs. And it was a policy choice for deregulation that caused this debacle

Harold Meyerson is one of our nation’s best labor reporters, and for our special issue, How We Broke the Supply Chain, he looked at the trucking industry, the history and legacy of deregulation, and how trucking can become a good job supporting commerce once again.

You can read Harold Meyerson’s story here.  
You can read our entire special issue on how outsourcing, monopolization, deregulation, financialization, and just-in-time logistics broke our supply chains at
prospect.org/supplychain
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David Dayen, Executive Editor
The American Prospect
 
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