Mexican truckers finally to enter USA

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Another blue collar American job evaporating before our eyes

You are right. About one third of the truck drivers are Teamster Union members. There are about 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S. and 2/3 of them are not union, but independent truckers.

In any case they will not voluntarily settle for lower wages. They will do everything they can within the law (and perhaps outside the law) to keep Mexican truckers out of the U.S.

It is simple: Cheap labor vs expensive labor. Nothing new.

ruveyn

Let's be clear, here--we are not dealing with cabotage--Mexican and Canadian drivers are not permitted to pick up and distribute goods entirely within the US--they may bring in goods from Canada or the Mexico, and deliver them to the United States. They may also pick up goods in the United States, and take them outside of the US to Canada or to Mexico.

And American drivers have precisely the same privileges, plus the exclusive abiltity to pick up goods in the United States and deliver them elsewhere in the United States.

You do know that there is a shortage of truckers in the USA right now, right?

Too many truckers retiring, and the new breed are too candy-ass to keep at it.

Tell that to people whose unemployment has run out.

Agreed, and truckers often have to pay for their own diesel fuel.

What does that have to do with anything?

It's a free market, right? They can negotiate their contracts, can't they?

Look at the monetary exchange rate sometime, the peso isn't exactly a high value currency.

Still trying to figure out what that has to do with the shortage of long-haul drivers in the USA.

Cause the Mexican drivers at the end of the day are supposed to head back to Mexico, well considering how much more the dollar is worth compared to their currency, they will have a much better standard of living despite getting less money than the US trucker.

Still not following you.

You're saying diesel is cheaper if you are a mexican?

Trucking is a hard business. The hours are long. The strain on brain and body is high. The accident rate and bodily injury rate for truckers is much higher than for white collar types. It is definitely not a career choice for the lazy or delicate.

ruveyn

So the proles of the USA are going to cede that work to messkins too?

Well, like we would say to the guys at occupy wall street. Stop complaining and get an actual job!

It's hard to give up on a career. I spent most of 2001 unemployed and when the dole ran out i took a job that paid slightly less than unemployment.

I went from testing software to answering the phone and telling people how to configure their modem or set up email.

I spent a year in that job. After the first couple months i could read a book while helping the dregs of society get online at dialup speeds. They kept offering me $0.25/hr if i would certify for DSL calls and i kept telling them that $7 a week after taxes wasn't enough incentive.

Half the people there were washouts from other industries. The other half had the wrong sexual orientation or skin color.

It was a sh!tty place to work with high turnover. Corporate treated us like a leper colony.

I'd been promised a performance review at 6 months and again at 12 months. Neither review happened. After 13 months i applied for a graveyard shift position at the network operations center for systems operator and gave them the non-redacted version of my resume. Got the job. Spent five months slogging through the abuse email queue, watching pirated movies, and taking sh!t from a supervisor who was emotionally about 14 years old and had a lot of problems he liked to b***h about. I hear that he finally quit after he had a nervous breakdown.

Funny thing, when i got to the NOC, I asked around about this performance review nonsense - i talked to people who had been there 7 years without a single review or raise.

And then five months later i got back into testing software for a 250% raise and never looked back. I now earn close to 400% of what i was making at the call center.

But a lot of the guys i worked with at the call center never did find their way out of that line of work. A few of them were still there a few months ago when corporate finished outsourcing everything.

Unemployment insurance was created with the explicit purpose of providing bridge funding for skilled workers so that they don't have to take a job that is beneath their earning potential when they unexpectedly lose their job. It's better for the economy as a whole if they are able to focus their time and energy finding suitable work at their earning potential. This is why turning down a job because it is unsuitable does not invalidate your claim.

A lot of jobs were lost that aren't going to come back. But most of those are in construction, and OWSers don't strike me as construction contractors.