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TRUCKERS´ LIFE * USA
* New Jersey - Trucking used to be a ticket to the middle class. Now it’s just another low-wage job
Elizabeth, N.J. -The Wasington Post, by LYDIA DEPILLIS -April 28, 2014: -- It’s a few minutes into a run carrying a load of scrap copper from the Port of New Jersey to a waste transfer station outside Philadelphia, and Miguel Tigre reaches over the dash of his maroon-and-yellow cab to grab a folder stuffed with the receipts squeezing him dry. He reels off calculations: He gets paid $400. It’s about 150 miles round-trip, and his truck gets 5.2 miles per gallon, so that's $180 in fuel. Tolls are $20. Taxes take about a quarter off the top -- but then there's insurance for the truck, and any repairs, which came to $22,000 last year... All told, that amounts to $32,000 in take-home pay per year, which is barely enough to cover rent and food for him and his wife, who doesn’t work. Then there’s child support and car insurance. Tigre, a stocky 56-year-old with the paunch that comes from sitting for 12 hours a day, says he can’t afford health insurance -- he’s diabetic, and pays $100 a pop out of pocket for regular doctor’s visits, plus $300 a month for insulin. And retirement? Tigre laughs, harshly... “The way things are going, I’m going to die before that,” he says... It’s the skewed economics of Tigre’s trade that prompted port truckers to go on strike in Los Angeles on Monday as part of a union-backed campaign to regain some of the pay, benefits and respect they say they’ve lost after three decades of decline...
Labels: truckers complaints
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