https://www.usatoday.com/pages/inter...-with-nothing/
^^ - story of truck drivers in California who are pretty much indentured servants, thanks to California's greenie weenies.
Short version of the story: California passed a law that made almost all older semi trucks illegal. So the owner-operators, who had made a good living for years hauling containers from ports to warehouses suddenly couldn't use their own equipment.
Their employers, the trucking companies, stepped in. They offered to finance shiny new trucks on behalf of the drivers who didn't earn enough to get financing. Surprise - it's a shoddy rent-to-own scheme that about 40% of the drivers lose out on. When said drivers can't make a payment, they lose the truck and all the equity they'd paid into it.
There's other stuff to, like companies forcing them to work longer-than-legal hours and keep fake logs, classifying them as contractors rather than employees, etc, but it's all part and parcel to the original question.
I understand getting duped into a bad contract. But here's an example from the article:
Deductions from pay from QTS, INC., on Feb. 17, 2012
Initial amount $854.13
Insurance <$90>
Lease <$250>
Tires <$35>
Registration <$65>
Gas <$405.46>
Remaining amount $0.67
Why on God's green Earth would anyone keep working 60+ hours a week to bring home .67 when you could do better mowing lawns or washing dishes?
The reason I ask is that one of the foundations of Libertarian philosophy is that we don't need labor laws and minimum wages because people won't bother to work if they're not making money. And yet...here's this guy.
Connect With Us