Sick and tired of being tired
by digby
Kathy Geier has a great piece up at the Baffler about an under-reported story: America’s culture of overwork. She starts off by discussing the horrific accident involving Tracy Morgan which turned out to be caused by a truck driver for Walmart who was on a hellish schedule and hadn’t slept in 24 hours. And then she lays blame where it properly lies:
In truth, it’s our political system that deserves to be indicted. Labor protections in the trucking industry are notoriously lax; and sadly, so are scandalously overworked truckers. A statement from the Teamsters noted that “[d]rivers feel pressure from their employers to drive more than 60-70 hours a week with insufficient rest.”
Recently, even the minimal legal protections that truckers do enjoy have come under fire. In the days before Morgan’s horrific accident, Senate Republicans were working like fiends to roll back important safety provisions for drivers. As Autoblog’s Pete Bigelow reports:
[T]he Senate Appropriations Committee approved legislation that would undo rules that only went into effect last year that mandated certain rest periods for truck drivers. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) added an amendment to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill that would suspend a regulation that truck drivers rest for 34 consecutive hours, including two nights from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM, before driving again.
“With one amendment, we’re doing away with rules we worked years to develop,” [transportation safety advocate Daphne] Izer said Monday.
The scary thing is that Collins, the senator leading this assault on public safety and human decency, is what passes as a “moderate” in the G.O.P. these days.
The Republicans’ attempt to force drivers to stay behind the wheel longer and with less rest comes at a time when truck accidents are on the rise. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, truck accident injuries were up 18 percent in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, and truck accident deaths had increased by 4 percent.
Isn’t that special? That wonderful gal Susan Collins thinks we’d all be better off if the roads we have to travel are filled with either sleep deprived or articiallially stimulated truck drivers. Because freedom.
Vox featured a series of graphs the other day that shows how free we Americans are:
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think that Collins amendment could be used as a perfect example of how corporations are killing us. The idea that they think it’s ok for truck drivers to be sleep deprived and in a hurry (and possibly on stimulants to stay awake) is scary in a way that really hits home for average people.
Be sure to read the Geier piece and consider how free you feel. If you’re not too tired. As she says:
Our culture of overwork has many victims. Even the privileged classes who are supposed to benefit most from our deregulated, capitalism-on-steroids modern workplace frequently pay a price. Professional-class workers pay with their health. Our worship of the free market god has so seriously threatened public safety that even the rich and famous like Tracy Morgan aren’t safe from the risks it poses.
Americans began agitating for the right to an eight-hour workday over 200 years ago. Countless workers fought and died for that right before it was institutionalized under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. But, sadly, it looks like this is one battle that we all must continue to fight.
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