The Orwellian Nightmare Of Being A Truck Driver | Karen Levy | TMR

Long-haul truckers are crucial to the American economy and value their independence, but are facing increased digital surveillance through mandatory digital monitors. These devices track their location and behaviors, leading to new forms of managerial and legal control. Karen Levy's book "Data Driven" offers insight into this changing industry and raises questions about technology's impact on work and privacy. The book highlights the challenges and resistance faced by truckers in this new reality. It contributes to discussions about protecting public interests and human dignity in the digital age.

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Check out more from the MR crew:

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Image Credit, Quintin Gellar

Image has been cropped and color has been altered.

Image Credit, Gerd Altmann

Image has been cropped and color has been altered.

Karen Levy professor at Cornell University author of data-driven truckers technology and the new workplace surveillance. Karen thanks so much for coming on today. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here of course. So we hear a lot about a trucker shortage in this country. I find the phrasing a bit Curious given the fact that these are human beings. and you write about this too and how they're basically treated as infrastructure despite being people. but we don't hear much about the reasons behind the said shortage. I guess let's start there. and then we can dive into some of the histories that got us to this point and the very very terrifying point in terms of surveillance and treatment that we're at right now. yeah I mean a trucker will be very quick to inform you that there is not a trucker shortage in the United States. but there is a wage shortage. There are plenty of folks who are equipped to do the work who have their commercial driver's licenses. You know who would like to do the work. but the way we compensate truckers in this country and the degree of the kind of infrastructure we afford them to do their work like that's insufficient. so the churn rate in trucking is really high. and some segments of the industry it's like a hundred percent a year. like every trucker leaves their job every year on average for some kinds of firms. and so it's just the kind of job that chews you up and spits you out in many ways. like truckers make about 47k per year. in 1980 they made about 110k in today's dollars. so like their wages have just tanked. and they're like away from home all the time. and I can't make doctor's appointments. and you know like their work is really difficult and unsafe. and it's been equated sometimes to Sweatshop labor in terms of you know the number of hours they work and the wages that they make and the risk that they put themselves at. and so all of those things like are not recipes for a lot of people wanting to stay in those jobs for a long period. and the reason that the wages have fallen to that degree I mean you can trace them back to very concrete decisions in our history. to unions being undercut. basically since the 1970s and you write about that. Do you mind telling that story a bit? Yeah, sure so Trucking in the United States has been formally deregulated since 1980. It was like one of the industries you know, one among a few but like one of the big Industries you know for which there was this big deregulatory push in 1980.