Your rights under OSHA 11(c)

100% right.

Then after years of appeals by your scumbag employer, draining your already empty pockets, some federal appeals judge, who never work a day in his life, ignores, for his own selfish intent, both the written word and intent of the law and tries to overturn what rights you have fought for. For that, he gets appointed Suppreme Court Judge.

 

I did skip some of the details, for brevity, and maybe took some artistic license. But the point remains valid. Possession of rights is not meaningful, without a practical vehicle with which to enforce those rights. The Department of Labor, in practice, finds that it is so difficult to prove employer culpability for labor law violations, in the trucking industry, that their standard response when you call them with any complaint, is to tell you to contact your congressman. This, of course, begs the question of what it is, exactly, that they do with their very large budget...

Truckers, as a rule, do not have the resources to fight for their employment rights, as the OP described, and still serve their typical reasons for being truckers in the first place - making an honest living and feeding their families. Carriers know this - they are largely responsible for it - and they take full advantage of this disparity between practical reality, and legal theory.

 

The way the courts are siding with corporations I wouldn't be to sure about anything as an employee....

 

Most states being sick other then a sickness from a disability a employer can fire you.You are employed what is called At will of the employer they can terminate employment At will.Now you can sue and might get unemployment but for damages good luck the attorney will cost big money and can be dragged out for years.

 

They can also force you to go see their doctor, since you're a commercial driver, and he can do things like declare that you aren't really disabled, in order to evade that exception... or declare you unfit to drive, and have DoT or whatever your state calls it, revoke your driving 'privilege'.

The ways that a carrier can screw you, in practice, far exceed the capacity of virtually any driver, to fight, much less win at. Our choices are, for all practical purposes, to accept it or get out. No surprise that so many choose to get out.

 

I guess I missed the point. They fire you for a non valid reason you put in a complaint, get a job and get on with your life.

Why would you have to remain unemployed until it was resolved by the courts?

 

Anyone who needs a government agency to "protect their Rights" is not worth much as a employee, grown men can handle their own bosses and decide for themselves how to do the job.

 

When you sue your carrier, it's a good bet that they bad-mouth you on your DAC. In any other job, this would make them liable for the full duration of your unemployment, at whatever wage you would reasonably have gotten, plus punitive damages - but not in trucking. In trucking, all they have to do is make up some 'safety issues', and you are suddenly not employable. Maybe you can find work in another field, maybe you can't - but if you could earn competitive wages, this way, you probably would not have been a trucker in the first place. So your income, at the very least, decreases substantially, your bills don't, and you also have legal fees to cover, in addition to supporting your family.

The point isn't complicated. Truckers, as a rule, do not have the economic leeway to be able to afford to fight a protracted legal battle, without sacrificing other areas that are probably more important. We have to choose our battles, and most of us like our families and children more than we feel the need to stand up for what's right, at the expense of our lives as we know them.

If you are just looking for ways to be obtuse, that's fine, but I gotta call "troll" on you, if so.

 

I believe that the OP was trying to illustrate that we had some legal recourse, through a government agency. Real men may or may not be able to handle their bosses; if said bosses are problematic, real men probably have to shut up and do what they have to, to keep their families fed and living indoors, until better circumstances present themselves...

I was trying to point out that, in practice, government agencies are simply not reliable, as a solution to the sort of employment mistreatment that truckers often experience. So yes, we have to handle it, ourselves - but that should not be the case. Or the agency should not be consuming resources from us, if it cannot or will not provide the services to us, that are it's fundamental mission... but I digress...