Letters: Card Check Bill; Trucking Growth; Rooftop Snow, Again
These Letters to the Editor appear in the March 30 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Card Check Bill
Passage of this legislation — the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as “card check” — would further erode American business competitiveness in the global marketplace (3-16, p. 1; click here for previous subscriber-content story).
Talk about bad timing.
Rudy Helwich
Regional Manager
Integra Logistics
Brea, Calif.
As one who has worked for many years in trucking in Quebec, North America’s most unionized jurisdiction, I find the U.S. Employee Free Choice Act laughably naïve.
The reality is that in matters of union accreditation, a system that leaves such an important decision to a count of union-gathered sign-up cards is anything but free.
Union intimidation of employees is the norm. I know; I have lived it.
How one can suggest with a straight face that the proposed system represents an improvement in labor democracy is beyond me. If the United States is anything like Canada, you will find union-sympathetic labor boards pooh-poohing union intimidation, while any attempt by management to foster an objective outcome is met with censure and legal sanctions.
The fact is that the only way for employees to express their will freely and without fear is by secret ballot. This law puts the finger of government on the scales of justice.
And to further suggest that this legislation will put wind in the sails of the U.S. economy is even more laughable. Throwing an anchor overboard is more like it.
Name and Company Withheld by Request
Chief Financial Officer
Unionized Carrier
Quebec
Canada
Trucking Growth
I have some questions related to the information in the March 16 article “Trucking to Grow 26% Over Next Decade” (p. 4; click here for previous subscriber-content article). First, what is your base line for that projection? Given the losses in trucking jobs in the past year, it sounds to me like 26% growth isn’t all that great an increase over 10 years, if you figure in the previous losses.
Second, your chief economist did not provide the details of how he arrived at this growth number. Is he using the trends of the past 15 years when our government created a housing bubble and then a financial bubble? Is he using numbers given him from the government to support their justification for the stimulus?
Everyone has an opinion about economics, so I will share mine. Our current administration in D.C. essentially has declared war on business, both directly and indirectly. Trucking serves these businesses. U.S. businesses currently pay the second-highest tax rate in the world, but these taxes are projected to go higher to pay for the stimulus.
Environmental regulations (a hidden tax) will increase at record levels in the next few years. As our government incurs more and more debt, the interest rates for this debt will begin to skyrocket. Businesses must compete with government for available capital and at similar interest rates.
As the recession continues, worldwide labor rates will drop, while our government is doing all it can to increase our cost of labor. That will move business offshore.
Our leaders also have decided not to drill for oil in our country, which will cause energy prices to go back up and threaten a recovery, if one begins to materialize.
U.S. industry has given this country the highest standard of living known in world history. It is being assaulted by our government and institutions of higher learning. Our government is exchanging a model that has proved itself over many, many years for a model that has been a proven failure everywhere it has been tried.
I hope your estimates regarding growth are correct and even understated. But to my knowledge, there has never been a country that has raced toward socialism and has seen economic growth anywhere near 26% over 10 years.
Larry Huisenga
President
Value Plus Transportation Inc.
Spokane, Mo.
Rooftop Snow, Again
This is in rebuttal to the March 16 letter to the editor commenting on snow and ice removal from trailer roofs (p. 8; click here for previous letter).
I concur on a number of items in the letter. I agree that it is dangerous to be on top of a trailer clearing snow, before, during and after a storm. I can attest to this because when I was a young man living in Vermont, I had my fair share of snow-clearing trailer roofs in the winter.
A KISS — “Keep It Simple, Stupid” — solution to this problem would be to construct a framework similar to an engine hoist that is taller than a trailer so that a trailer may pass through it. Attached to the top of the framework and hanging down would be mud flaps or the heads of whisk-brooms. The arrangement would look similar to a car-wash brush that cleans the car roof.
When the trailer is exiting the yard to go outbound, it would drive through the framework, and the brush material would clear as much snow as possible before entering the highway.
Let’s face it — as transportation officials, we know the sheets of snow and ice do not start to blow off until the vehicle is well under way. Conversely, teaching a driver in a car not to be too close at 65 mph is similar to teaching a pig to sing.
In other words, save your energy and try to do as much as you can before the vehicle leaves the yard.
Jonathan Winterling
Senior Buyer
Penske Truck Leasing
Reading, Pa.
