Tucked away in the recent Congressional spending bill is, believe it or not, a provisions that allows truck drivers to drive for up to 82 hours a week, double the working hours of ordinary office workers. And with no overtime!
This is a sign of things to come. The Republicans loath all regulation, and this is No. 1 on the list, overturning a requirement that, for safety reasons, drivers to take two consecutive nights off after every 70 hours they spend behind the wheel.
The trucking industry said the previous rule had an unintended consequence of “forcing” more truckers to take to the road early in the morning, when commuters and school buses are out. The real reason was that the regulation has hurt industry profits, an alledgedly $1 billion in lost productivity, according to one source.
Driver fatigue is a leading factor in large truck crashes, which killed more than 3,500 people in 2012. Now there is likely to be more death and destruction on American highways.
The only good news is that there is a provision in the spending bill that calls for a detailed study of the effect of the regulations on truck crashes. The measure only rolls back the new rules until next October, so it is possible that common sense might prevail. But the story is an illustration of the way big business can metaphorically, and even literally, roll over the public.
Epicureanism puts life before profit!
This is the worst case yet of Americans working too much. Why are they content with just a couple of weeks off per year when the rest of the developed world demands at least four weeks (in addition to public holidays)?
I remember hearing the comedian Bill Maher talk about the lack of vacation time in the US and how it’s making us miserable. He said (this is not word for word) “If you go to any of the national parks, the first thing you notice is that everyone there is German, French, ect. because they have the time to go to OUR parks and we don’t.”
I recently came across an interesting idea on another blog. It is an alternative calendar that does away with the seven-day work week that most of us are familiar with. The idea, as the author explains, is to balance work and leisure through a better organized schedule. Here is the link:
http://blogs.mentor.com/colinwalls/blog/2009/06/25/the-8-day-week/
Thank you for your contribution. Interesting idea, but I don’t know how you would ever get a consensus to change life so radically.
You may recall that back in the 19th Century they adjusted the calendar by a few days to conform with the actual real time as determined by the orbit of the Earth round the Sun. From memory I think they fast-forwarded the date by about a week or so, and there were riots because people thought they were having their lives shortened by several days. One has to come to terms with the fact that, if a large number of people vote for parties with policies absolutely contrary to their best interests (Republicans) you can be sure that the same sort of people would vote to keep their time off minimal and be outraged to be given more time off. Don’t ask me why! It’s perverse.