Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation / Edition 1

by Michael H. Belzer

Overview

Long hours, low wages, and unsafe workplaces characterized sweatshops a hundred years ago. These same conditions plague American trucking today.

Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation exposes the dark side of government deregulation in America's interstate trucking industry. In the years since deregulation in 1980, median earnings have dropped 30% and most long-haul truckers earn less than half of pre-regulation wages. Work weeks average more than sixty hours. Today, America's long-haul truckers are working harder and earning less than at any time during the last four decades.

Written by a former long-haul trucker who now teaches industrial relations at Wayne State University, Sweatshops on Wheels raises crucial questions about the legacy of trucking deregulation in America and casts provocative new light on the issue of government deregulation in general.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195128864
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	05/01/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Michael H. Belzer, a nationally-known expert on the trucking industry, is Associate Professor of Industrial Relations and Director of the Graduate Program in Industrial Relations at at Wayne State University and an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations. He is currently conducting two major government-funded research programs on truck safety. Prior to earning his Ph.D. at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, he spent eight years as a Teamster driving a tank truck over-the-road.

Table of Contents

1. A New Look at Competitive Forces
2. Two Decades of Decline
3. The Road From Institutional to Market Regulation
4. An Industry Transformed
5. Collective Bargaining Still Makes a Difference
6. Labor Market Failure and the Role of Institutions
7. What if the Rest of the World Looked Like Trucking
8. Deregulation as Public Policy: Competition's Winners and Losers

Editorial Reviews

"Is low pay in the trucking industry making the nation's roads unsafe [?] With the U.S. economy booming and the demand for drivers mounting, why haven't working conditions for truckers improved? [This book] argues that trucking embodies the dark side of the new economy."-"Sweatshops on Wheels," U.S. News and World Report

"Conditions are so poor and the pay system so unfair that long-haul companies compete with the fast-food industry for workers. Most long-haul carriers experience 100% annual driver turnover. The case for reform is made exhaustively [in] Sweatshops on Wheels."— The Washington Post "The first credible cry in the wilderness describing the pitiful state to which the American trucking industry has fallen."—Land Line

"The cabs of 18-wheelers have become the sweatshops of the new millennium, with some truckers toiling up to 95 hours per week for what amounts to barely more than the minimum wage. [This book] is eye-opening in its appraisal of what the trucking industry has become."- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"The first credible cry in the wilderness describing the pitiful state to which the American trucking industry has fallen."—Land Line

From the Publisher