the impact a $15 per hour minimum wage on the trucking industry

@rcelmo I grew up on a large cattle farm in central florida and yes you get breaks on land tax by claiming “green belt” status. You cant even dig a water hole these days or irrigation ditches without the feds up your ### in fact under the previous administration at least one person was jailed for it. Yes jailed

 

If your boss can't even afford to fix the roof, how secure do you think your job really is? If your truck goes down, and it's going to be an expensive repair, can he afford to fix it? If not, guess who no longer has a job!

And yes, your boss paid you before he paid himself...because if he DIDN'T pay you, the labor board would be going after him. When you're running a business and hire employees, you have to pay them on pay day or you're likely to find yourself in a heap of trouble...even if that means NOT paying yourself.

 

A banker, a trucker and a fast-food worker sat down at a table with 20 cookies. The banker grabbed 19 cookies and told the trucker: "Look out for that fast-food workers, he's going to steal your cookie".

If you think raising the minimum wage to $10 or $11 or even $15 an hour is going to kill the economy, you have it all backwards. Raising the minimum wages does 1 thing very well: Increases the disposable income of the bottom wage earners while pushing up wages for everyone else. Economics 101: Somebody making $300 a week and then going up to $400 a week means they now have an extra $100 to pump back into the local economy which benefits small businesses etc. If that same money just stays as profits for the company it's reinvested in offshore bank accounts.

If you think increases in minimum wage push up the prices of a burger then why has McD's raised it's menu prices while the Fed Minimum wage has stayed @ &7.25? Prices going to rise one way or the other. Only difference is how obscene the profits are.

Remember when they were closing down all the American factories in the 80's but then the cost of all the imported products dropped by half? No? Of course not! Because the factories were #### down, good American jobs lost and then the import tariffs & taxes were all dropped so the companies could exploit workers in developing countries while making even bigger profits.

DO you know how much it cost to make a t-shirt on a wholesale scale in SE Asia? Less than $1 per piece and that includes shipping to the USA. How much do you pay retail? You're being played everyday.

Right, the big companies like Walmart, Mc Donald's etc actually help their employees file for food stamps. So your tax dollars are supporting their profit margins. Smart move by the companies, right?

In the 1950's the USA taxed the rich at 90% tax rate and we had more Americans in unions than at any other time. What happened? It was a golden age for the American worker. But along came Reagan with deregulation and anti-union laws. Very few increases in the minimum wage as well. How did that work out? LOL this crap pay by the mile that hasn't increased is a direct result of those policies.

How many of the truckers on this forum would be better off making $15 an hour and time and a half for everything over 40. And you were paid for all your "work" time, not just driving time. At 70 hours per week that would be $1,275 a week, a LOT more than most of the mega carrier drivers make. Don't get mad. Don't be jealous. Wake up and organize for a union. Change the labor laws so we get paid by the hour, not the mile. Solidarity goes a lot further than being a scab & a back-stabber.

 

Mods, If this is too political, please just delete it.

Really?

The "golden" age of the American Worker was in the 60's not the 50's. The 50's were the decade of mundane economic gains, finally getting out of the depression and having two major recessions and a war that restricted material.

The real golden age of the American worker was before FDR and his new deal, but the second real golden age of the American worker was between 1965 and 1970. It was a short lived time when we had the best world for families and jobs.

Along came Nixon who fiddled with the economy, he ushered in a mess of regulations and a mess more of problems, then came Carter who actually created the deregulation push and later spurred on the problems we had in the 80's. Anti-union laws? Where? The unions were operating under old rules with new people and tried hard to push into places that they should not have been allowed. Public servants were not allowed to have collective bargaining and rightfully so, people like John L. Lewis, Reuther and even Hoffa thought that was a very bad thing - they serve the people, unions would make it so they serve themselves. Unions don't like competition or shouldn't and they serve themselves first and foremost then their workers but never the industry.

I was stabbed in the back by my fellow drivers when they are willing to sell us out, when they won't participate in our political process and force things to happen like ELD and CARB. If we wanted to make things better, we would fight as a group to be recognized as skilled labor, demand a hard entry into this as a profession and support of self-policing to rid ourselves of those who don't want to treat this as anything but a job.

 

What about truck driver wages????? Every driver on
here wants more money. If truck driver wages go up does
that drive the cost if everything up?????

 

No bodies job is really secure........my point is I would
rather work for a poor man that cares about his employees
than some rich person who couldn't care less about the
workers.

My point is he paid well above minimum wage, not because
he had to but because he cared. He had respect for the worker
because while he owned the company in his mind he was just
a worker.........just like the rest of us.

The problem I have is with somebody who pays the minimum
he can get away with.......while personally living "high on the hog".
I work for one like that now. He goes golfing a lot......fires drivers
over nothing........doesn't maintain the equipment because this
college educated "smart" company owner actually believes he
saves money that way.

It is hard to find good drivers----------it is even harder to
find a good company. Just because somebody owns a couple
trucks does not qualify them as somehow smarter than the
drivers or even prove they work hard. Anybody can sign on the
dotted line to buy a truck.

 

In Belltown even if you work full-time for $15/hr you aren't going to be able to afford to live anywhere near where you work. It was like that way before the minimum wage increase. For 900 square feet we paid over double what we spent on a 2800sqft house in Vegas. On the flip side I don't own a car anymore, I take the bus and my wife can walk to work. Sure a pint of Ben & Jerry's costs $7, but having everything you need in a 5 block radius is very nice.

I think I could be convinced the minimum wage is either a good thing or a bad thing. In WA transportation workers get paid OT, and I know for sure nobody is going to convince me there's a good reason I shouldn't get paid OT for working more than 40 in a week. Maybe the politicians got the minimum wage wrong, I really don't know, but they definitely go it right with the overtime law.

 

Work for a poor man? I'm scratching my head at this one... Never worked for a poor man.

As far as paying the least you can get away with, that perfectly describes the minimum wage, because that is what it is. Learn some skills, make yourself worth more. Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage.

Milton Friedman - A Conversation On Minimum Wage

 

Our minimum wage increases to $14 per hour today. More raises over the next few years are expected.
City I live in is offering a "income subsidy" up to $1100 monthly for low wage earners

 

The Avg. American is a brain-washed "Proletariat." They know little to nothing about exploitation of the worker nor have they studied the history Labor vs. Capitalist / Industrialist. Before THERE were labor laws, "children" (little children under the age of 7) were put onto manufacturing lines to help their families eat and keep a roof over their heads (many of them died or were maimed).

IF the free market Capitalist were given their way, they would open the borders to every 3rd world country and FLOOD the market with Truckers who could neither read nor write English (nor care too...not to mention reading street signs). Don't think for one second this wouldn't happen (hell, its happening now with H1-b VISA Drivers)

WAKE UP !

The Unions protect the Workers (not the Capitalist who want to exploit you for lower wages, more hours and less benefits).

~T