Widespread retail, warehouse and trucking worker walkouts and demonstrations planned for Friday
Workers from some of the largest companies in the United States are planning a series of walkouts, strikes and demonstrations across the country Friday in an effort to bring attention to safety standards, pay issues, and more.
Employees from Walmart, Amazon, Target, Whole Foods, and Instacart are calling for employees to call out from work or leave during lunch. According to The Intercept, some union members will join workers outside warehouses and storefronts in a show in solidarity.
“We are acting in conjunction with workers at Amazon, Target, Instacart, and other companies for International Worker’s Day [May 1] to show solidarity with other essential workers,” said Daniel Steinbrook, a Whole Foods employee and a strike organizer.
Independent small truckers are also demonstrating Nationwide. Hundreds, if not thousands of truckers are converging on cities across the country to stand up against low market freight rates, rising operational costs and better protection for drivers on the road. Peaceful demonstrations and “slow rolls” (where truckers travel together on highways at the minimum speed allowable) are planned in Washington D.C., Chicago, San Bernardino, and Fontana. Several other smaller demonstrations are also planned in other cities, but information has not been made available.
One of the groups involved in the trucker demonstrations in DC, The Disrespected Trucker, released a press release highlighting the reasons behind the demonstrations. That release is below:
As trucking continues to deteriorate to the point of Starvation. We essential small business truckers have decided it was time to Make Trucking Great Again. We are meeting in Washington DC between April 30th through May 4th. We encourage any and all citizens to join us in this event to save the small business truckers from ruination during this critical time in our nation.
We are exercising our First Amendment Rights to peacefully assemble and redress our grievances with our Government. We small business truckers are being gouged by the dishonorable Shippers/Brokers with prices that are averaging between .50 per mile and $1.00 per mile. The average cost to run a truck is $1.50-$1.75 per mile. We truckers have consistently taken the hit over many years. While the dishonorable Shippers/Brokers continue to maintain rising profits. During this current crisis we are being gouged on pricing due to the lack of freight available. The honorable Shippers/Brokers on the other hand have kept the rates as consistent as possible through this crisis. While we understand that there may be less freight the cost to move that freight did not go down.
Currently truckers, due to over-regulation and inadequate training many are failing to continue in this business. If we truckers are essential as the President and our Nation has declared. We are wondering how such essential people can be taken advantage of with price gouging by the dishonorable Shippers/Brokers?
Safety and protection has also been overlooked during this crisis. We are being asked to pick up and deliver in constant hot spots. We are not offered any kind of protection for doing such. It amazes us that just two months ago our government controlled every aspect of our lives and now they just want to be hands off.
We truckers are requesting the President freeze all debts for truckers and all citizens starting 90 days prior to the announcement of this crisis, through this crisis, and to continue until 90 days after the all clear order has been given. We have a letter prepared that we desire to deliver to the President for his review.
We are concerned about the jobs in our industry as well as others, with the recent introduction of Automated Trucks. We are concerned that the Department of Labor and the Department of Transportation has basically given the Automated Companies the ability to run upon our nations highways without any substantial testing for safety. These Automated Trucks will reduce the truck driving jobs by 50-65% It will also impact many other support sectors in tremendous ways. With the devastation that is occurring to our economy due to the CV19 crisis, we are asking that our government rethink the process for Automated Trucks. We feel that at the least Automated Trucks should be required to abide by the same regulations as Non-Automated Trucks this would be to include a driver in those trucks. This would be no different than what is required in the Aviation Industry which is also regulated by the aforementioned agencies as well.
