Sweatshops on Wheels

Sweatshops on Wheels PDF Author: Michael H. Belzer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195128864
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
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.

Sweatshops on Wheels

Sweatshops on Wheels PDF Author: Michael H. Belzer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195128864
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Big Rig

The Big Rig PDF Author: Steve Viscelli
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520962710
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Long-haul trucks have been described as sweatshops on wheels. The typical long-haul trucker works the equivalent of two full-time jobs, often for little more than minimum wage. But it wasn’t always this way. Trucking used to be one of the best working-class jobs in the United States. The Big Rig explains how this massive degradation in the quality of work has occurred, and how companies achieve a compliant and dedicated workforce despite it. Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of extensive observation, including six months training and working as a long-haul trucker, Viscelli explains in detail how labor is recruited, trained, and used in the industry. He then shows how inexperienced workers are convinced to lease a truck and to work as independent contractors. He explains how deregulation and collective action by employers transformed trucking’s labor markets--once dominated by the largest and most powerful union in US history--into an important example of the costs of contemporary labor markets for workers and the general public.

Sweatshop USA

Sweatshop USA PDF Author: Daniel E. Bender
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136064028
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
For over a century, the sweatshop has evoked outrage and moral repugnance. Once cast as a type of dangerous and immoral garment factory brought to American shores by European immigrants, today the sweatshop is reviled as emblematic of the abuses of an unregulated global economy. This collection unites some of the best recent work in the interdisciplinary field of sweatshop studies. It examines changing understandings of the roots and problems of the sweatshop, and explores how the history of the American sweatshop is inexorably intertwined with global migration of capital, labor, ideas and goods. The American sweatshop may be located abroad but remains bound to the United States through ties of fashion, politics, labor and economics. The global character of the American sweatshop has presented a barrier to unionization and regulation. Anti-sweatshop campaigns have often focused on local organizing and national regulation while the sweatshop remains global. Thus, the epitaph for the sweatshop has frequently been written and re-written by unionists, reformers, activists and politicians. So, too, have they mourned its return.

When a Heart Turns Rock Solid

When a Heart Turns Rock Solid PDF Author: Timothy Black
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0307377741
Category : Poor
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Based on an 18-year study, this work offers a look at how jobs, schools, and prison have affected the lives and choices of a generation of Puerto Rican youth at the turn of the 21st century.

Trucking in the Age of Information

Trucking in the Age of Information PDF Author: Dale Belman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351143948
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Trucking in the Age of Information provides a comprehensive overview of the contemporary trucking industry. Prior research on trucking has focused on the effects of deregulation on the industry, but the industry's current transformation is driven by information technology, emerging business strategies, globalization of commodity production and the rise of package express and logistics. The volume brings together acknowledged and emerging scholars of the industry including Thomas Corsi (University of Maryland), Chelsea White III (Georgia Tech), Starr McMullen (Oregon State University), Will Mitchell (Duke University), Jeff Liker (University of Michigan), Francine LaFontaine (University of Michigan), Kristen Monaco (California State University at Long Beach) and Michael Conyngham (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) to address issues including technological change, third party logistics, lean trucking, driver safety and health, homeland security and the consolidation of trucking services. Each chapter provides an overview of industry issues and a discussion of current research.

A Survival Guide for Truck Drivers

A Survival Guide for Truck Drivers PDF Author: Alice Adams
Publisher: Cengage Learning
ISBN: 9781401810627
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
An employer’s cost to replace a driver ranges from $5,000 to $8,000. Turnover can be prevented and retention increased by developing a driver with the life skills necessary to be successful in their daily working lives. A Survival Guide for Truck Drivers is the only book written for students or experienced drivers that offers, in a straightforward and nonpatronizing style, the practical tips for making life on the road more stress-free and comfortable – both for the driver and his or her family.Until now, drivers usually entered the transportation industry armed with a Commercial Drivers License and perhaps stories and information from friends and family. This new guide not only provides valuable information and invaluable insights into the life of a professional driver, but also offers resources and encouragement for those who keep North America’s commerce moving down the highway.Topics range from Money Management and Professional Improvement to Staying Healthy and Dealing With Stress – presenting advice to make the driver’s life better and happier. This lifestyle guide has a universal application that will appeal to student drivers, company drivers, owner-operators, and also the drivers’ families.A driving school graduate’s chance of landing a good job partly depends on his or her possession of life skills. Good retention tools are needed for the experienced but problem driver. A Survival Guide for Truck Drivers is the one solution for successful drivers.

Sweated Work, Weak Bodies

Sweated Work, Weak Bodies PDF Author: Daniel E. Bender
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813533384
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In the early 1900s, thousands of immigrants labored in New Yorks Lower East Side sweatshops, enduring work environments that came to be seen as among the worst examples of Progressive-Era American industrialization. Although reformers agreed that these unsafe workplaces must be abolished, their reasons have seldom been fully examined. Sweated Work, Weak Bodies is the first book on the origins of sweatshops, exploring how they came to represent the dangers of industrialization and the perils of immigration. It is an innovative study of the language used to define the sweatshop, how these definitions shaped the first anti-sweatshop campaign, and how they continue to influence our current understanding of the sweatshop.

Data Driven

Data Driven PDF Author: Karen Levy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691259127
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A behind-the-scenes look at how digital surveillance is affecting the trucking way of life Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have long valued the day-to-day independence of their work, sharing a strong occupational identity rooted in a tradition of autonomy. Yet these workers increasingly find themselves under many watchful eyes. Data Driven examines how digital surveillance is upending life and work on the open road, and raises crucial questions about the role of data collection in broader systems of social control. Karen Levy takes readers inside a world few ever see, painting a bracing portrait of one of the last great American frontiers. Federal regulations now require truckers to buy and install digital monitors that capture data about their locations and behaviors. Intended to address the pervasive problem of trucker fatigue by regulating the number of hours driven each day, these devices support additional surveillance by trucking firms and other companies. Traveling from industry trade shows to law offices and truck-stop bars, Levy reveals how these invasive technologies are reconfiguring industry relationships and providing new tools for managerial and legal control—and how truckers are challenging and resisting them. Data Driven contributes to an emerging conversation about how technology affects our work, institutions, and personal lives, and helps to guide our thinking about how to protect public interests and safeguard human dignity in the digital age.

Monopsony Capitalism

Monopsony Capitalism PDF Author: Ashok Kumar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108775594
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This book explores the combination of capital's changing composition and labour's subjective agency to examine whether the waning days of the 'sweatshop' have indeed begun. Focused on the garment and footwear sectors, it introduces a universal logic that governs competition and reshapes the chain. By analysing workers' collective action at various sites of production, it observes how this internal logic plays out for labour who are testing the limits of the social order, stretching it until the seams show. By examining the most valorised parts of underdeveloped sectors, one can see where capital is going and how it is getting there. These findings contribute to ongoing efforts to establish workers' rights in sectors plagued by poverty and powerlessness, building fires and collapses. With this change and a capable labour movement, there's hope yet that workers may close the gap.

Creating Good Jobs

Creating Good Jobs PDF Author: Paul Osterman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262043637
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Experts discuss improving job quality in low-wage industries including retail, residential construction, hospitals and long-term healthcare, restaurants, manufacturing, and long-haul trucking. Americans work harder and longer than our counterparts in other industrialized nations. Yet prosperity remains elusive to many. Workers in such low-wage industries as retail, restaurants, and home construction live from paycheck to paycheck, juggling multiple jobs with variable schedules, few benefits, and limited prospects for advancement. These bad outcomes are produced by a range of industry-specific factors, including intense competition, outsourcing and subcontracting, failure to enforce employment standards, overt discrimination, outmoded production and management systems, and inadequate worker voice. In this volume, experts look for ways to improve job quality in the low-wage sector. They offer in-depth examinations of specific industries—long-term healthcare, hospitals and outpatient care, retail, residential construction, restaurants, manufacturing, and long-haul trucking—that together account for more than half of all low-wage jobs. The book's sector view allows the contributors to address industry-specific variations that shape operational choices about work. Drawing on deep industry knowledge, they consider important distinctions within and between these industries; the financial, institutional, and structural incentives that shape the choices employers make; and what it would take to make more jobs better jobs. Contributors Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt, Dale Belman, Julie Brockman, Françoise Carré, Susan Helper, Matt Hinkel, Tashlin Lakhani, JaeEun Lee, Raphael Martins, Russell Ormiston, Paul Osterman, Can Ouyang, Chris Tilly, Steve Viscelli