Correct me if I am wrong, but, it seems that the three million Commercial Drivers or so here in the good ol' USA are being regulated without due representation.
There seems to be only a few players that have been showing up at the public hearings and that are being heard by the FMCSA and non of them have the company drivers intrest at heart.
Those players are the OOIDA, (Owner/Operator Independent Driver Association) and the ATA, (American Trucking Association).
The OOIDA has a membership of approximately 150,000 or about 15% of all drivers and most of those are small company owners. The ATA has 37000 members who are all corporate size truck company owners. I didn't check any of the roll calls on the various regulatory hearings held by the FMCSA but did do a search for truck driver associations and didn't really find any that appeared to represent the company driver. Of course there is the Teamster who have branched out into other industrial divisions and boasts 1.5 million members but who really believes they are interested in the company driver.
You could say that the OOIDA members interest are similar to ours and in many respects you would be right but, it's still all about profit for their members. Of course the ATA is worse. They don't care about us company drivers trying to make a living, I do believe they are the ones promoting the lie that there is a driver shortage, there is actually far more drivers than the market can support which is part of the reason wages have fallen so far behind inflation.
Non of these organizations as far as I know have ever considered trying to get us reclassified by the government into our own labor class, consequently we are still treated as day labors as far as the labor law is concerned.
Meanwhile our wages have not kept up with inflation and now we are being saddled with Government regulations that makes it even harder for us to meet the demands of our jobs and the needs of our families.
I got no answers.
Wish I could retire.
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