There’s a stark reason why America’s 1.8 million long-haul truck drivers can’t strike

  • Truck­ing is pow­ered by 1.8 mil­lion long-haul truck dri­vers, who around 71% of Amer­i­ca’s freight. 
  • Many of them were union­ized as recent­ly as the 1970s, but a dereg­u­la­tion bill passed in 1980 revamped the indus­try. Labor experts argue that change was not for the bet­ter.
  • As a result, truck dri­vers aren’t eas­i­ly able to strike. Many have tried, but the move­ments haven’t gained trac­tion. 
  • Vis­it Insid­er’s home­page for more sto­ries.

Tens of thou­sands of truck dri­vers were schem­ing ear­li­er this year to strike. Such a work stop­page could have tremen­dous impli­ca­tions — some 71% of freight is moved by long-haul trucks, includ­ing gro­ceries, man­u­fac­tured goods, and even mon­ey. 

“We’re not all fat slobs, and we don’t all do the stereo­typ­i­cal truck­er things,” Will Kling, a truck dri­ver in Reno, Neva­da, told Busi­ness Insid­er last year. “Truck­ing has been for­got­ten.”

“When you go to that store and you pick up that bot­tle of wine or that ketchup, you don’t think about the process it took to get it where it is,” Kling said.

But, instead of teach­ing Amer­i­ca at large to respect the 1.8 mil­lion big rig dri­vers, the much-hyped protest was a dud. Ulti­mate­ly, just a few dozen peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the April “Black Smoke Mat­ters” strike.

Read more: Thou­sands of truck dri­vers are orga­niz­ing a strike in a Face­book called ‘Black Smoke Mat­ters’ — here’s the ori­gin of the provoca­tive name

Blue-col­lar work­ers in gen­er­al have strug­gled in recent decades as pay and job secu­ri­ty tum­bles. But, fol­low­ing the largest strike since 1970, Gen­er­al Motors employ­ees rep­re­sent­ed by the Unit­ed Auto­mo­bile Work­ers secured this week an $11,000 bonus, a pledge to retain 9,000 jobs, and oth­er wins, accord­ing to the Detroit Press.

And that strike held seri­ous eco­nom­ic impli­ca­tions for Amer­i­ca’s largest automak­er. Bank of Amer­i­ca esti­mat­ed that the walk­out cost GM a whop­ping $2 bil­lion.

It’s not just auto work­ers who are demand­ing pay and ben­e­fit boosts, either. In 2018, a record num­ber of Amer­i­can work­ers went on strike; the most since 1986, Vox report­ed. That’s 485,000 employ­ees rang­ing from pub­lic school teach­ers to Mar­riott hotel work­ers. 

The reason truck drivers can’t achieve the same wins dates back to the Carter era

This dri­ve for col­lec­tive action rais­es the ques­tion of why one of the largest labor forces of blue-col­lar work­ers can’t seem to strike, too. 

The rea­son goes all the way back to the late 1970s, when even lib­er­al law­mak­ers were jump­ing on the band­wag­on of dereg­u­la­tion. Truck­ing was seen as a key area in which dereg­u­la­tion could ben­e­fit con­sumers.

Read more: Truck dri­ver salaries have fall­en by as much as 50% since the 1970s — and experts say a lit­tle-known law explains why

In the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, truck dri­vers had to buy spe­cif­ic routes to move a cer­tain type of prod­uct from one loca­tion to the oth­er. But goods exempt from reg­u­la­tion moved at rates 20% to 40% below sim­i­lar that were reg­u­lat­ed, accord­ing to Thomas Gale Moore, then a senior fel­low at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s con­ser­v­a­tive pub­lic pol­i­cy think tank Hoover Insti­tu­tion. Moore not­ed that rates for “cooked poul­try” were 50% high­er than rates for “fresh dressed poul­try.”

Ulti­mate­ly, that meant con­sumers were pay­ing more because truck­ing was an indus­try with lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion and high bar­ri­ers to entry. But it also meant truck dri­vers were bet­ter paid.

Trucker protest 1973

1973: Truck dri­vers gath­er ahead of a fuel price protest in Worces­ter, Mass­a­chus­setts.
Spencer Grant/Getty Images


The Motor Car­ri­er Act of 1980 removed many of the cum­ber­some reg­u­la­tions that the pre­vi­ous law, passed in 1935, had put in place. Most notably, it allowed new truck­ing to open with rel­a­tive ease and removed many of the route reg­u­la­tions. Com­pa­nies also had more con­trol over chang­ing their rates. 

The law was passed by  Jim­my Carter, who declared that the MCA would save con­sumers as much as $8 bil­lion ($25 bil­lion in 2018 dol­lars) each year. 

That deregulatory act also clamped down on unions

Fol­low­ing the pass­ing of the MCA, truck dri­vers’ salaries tum­bled. From 1977 to 1987, mean truck dri­ver earn­ings declined 24%, accord­ing to research by Wayne State Uni­ver­si­ty eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor Michael Belz­er. And from 1980 to the present day, a Busi­ness Insid­er analy­sis found that medi­an truck­ing wages have sunk as much as 35.8% in some met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. 

“To be able to be a truck dri­ver used to be quite a good blue-col­lar, mid­dle-class job, but over the past 40 , it has kind of dwin­dled away,” Gor­don Klemp, prin­ci­pal of the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Insti­tute, pre­vi­ous­ly told Busi­ness Insid­er. 

Trucker wages 1980 vs 2017


Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics, Andy Kiersz/Business Insid­er


Unions also lost much of their pow­er. Mem­ber­ship in Team­sters, which was once one of the most pow­er­ful unions around, has declined dra­mat­i­cal­ly. In 1974, Belz­er wrote that there were 2,019,300 truck­ers in Team­sters. Now, there are 75,000. 

When truck dri­vers were large­ly in Team­sters, work stop­pages were com­mon — and some­times quite dra­mat­ic. In 1970, a nation­wide truck­er strike went on for more than a month, deal­ing a seri­ous eco­nom­ic blow in cities like Chica­go and St. Louis.

In Cleve­land, Ohio, the impacts even became one of domes­tic secu­ri­ty as rock-throw­ing pro­test­ers drew 3,000 Nation­al Guards­men to the city. “Hel­met­ed troops, armed with M-1 rifles, were sta­tioned in pairs on some over­pass­es, while oth­er guards­men rum­bled along on patrol in quarter-ton trucks,” report­ed The New York Times on May 1, 1970.

The strike led to a pay increase of near­ly 30% for all Team­sters truck­ers. The aver­age nation­wide hourly pay of $4 got a $1.10/ bump, the Times report­ed.

Without a union, a nationwide strike to force wage and benefits bumps is nearly impossible

Bob Stan­ton, a long­time truck dri­ver who did­n’t sup­port the Black Smoke Mat­ters strikes, said it’s too chal­leng­ing to wran­gle all of Amer­i­ca’s truck dri­vers to strike togeth­er. “You can’t get enough of truck­ing to par­tic­i­pate,” he told Busi­ness Insid­er.

Truck dri­ver Lee Epling not­ed that truck dri­vers don’t have enough time or mon­ey to strike. “In order for a move­ment like (Black Smoke Mat­ters) to actu­al­ly hap­pen, you need the two things inde­pen­dent own­er oper­a­tors like myself do not have,” Epling told Busi­ness Insid­er. “That’s the lux­u­ry of time, and a whole lot of mon­ey.”

But union­iza­tion would ease the bar­ri­ers to strik­ing. Most strikes are called by labor unions as a last resort while bar­gain­ing for a new con­tract. Even those who might not nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with the strike are pre­vent­ed from work­ing, because strikes are called after enough union mem­bers vote to stop work­ing. 

Read more: Truck­ers vot­ed for Trump in droves. Now they say his trade war is ‘’ their abil­i­ty to make a liv­ing.

And con­tract bar­gain­ing cre­ates an event and rea­son for the strike to occur. Nonunion­ized work­ers don’t have the same access to infor­ma­tion or uni­fied pur­pose. 

Trucker protest

1977: Jose Salazar, 6, joins Team­sters protest. Oth­ers are Jose’s grand­fa­ther, Lam­ont Bum­crot, left, and Al Lan­ders, both truck dri­vers for Safe­way.
Den­ver Post via Get­ty Images


Despite that, many truck dri­vers — a labor pool that leans right — inter­est­ed in strikes don’t actu­al­ly sup­port unions. That includes Rick Blat­ter, a spokesper­son for the Cana­di­an Truck­ers Asso­ci­a­tion who has led sev­er­al truck­ing protests.

“I am not a union man myself,” Blat­ter told Busi­ness Insid­er. “I am pro-choice. Those who want to union­ize should have this right. I per­son­al­ly do not want to be union­ized. Those who don’t want to union­ize should have the right to be non-union.”

Still, Blat­ter is con­fi­dent truck­ers might some­day band togeth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly through a pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion. “Truck strikes don’t always work because orga­niz­ing inde­pen­dent truck­ers is like orga­niz­ing anar­chists,” he said. “It is very hard. But every­thing is pos­si­ble. Even­tu­al­ly.”

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