5 ms·

> For those who believe the market will fix it: Well paid drivers no longer exist. The last time he has seen a local work as truck driver was in mid-2000 and me

by makomk 6y ago

> For those who believe the market will fix it: Well paid drivers no longer exist. The last time he has seen a local work as truck driver was in mid-2000 and meanwhile salaries have dropped to ~€700 and less therefore only some Eastern Europeans can justify that working as a driver still makes sense for them. There is not much wiggle room left in terms of just paying better salaries - even smaller freight-forwarders are asking themselves whether it continues to go there (at least for now). Which is probably, in part, why Brexit happened. Think about it - this is a career that used to provide fairly well-paid jobs to British people, but EU rules around access to our trucking market meant that wages were driven down so much that the only people who can do that work are Eastern Europeans based in countries with much lower cost of living. And the response of the British elite, including our press, was to insist that this didn't happen, that working class people were just brainwashed into blaming the EU because they were too stupid to realise it was their own damn fault they didn't have jobs. There's comments along those lines in almost every HN discussion of Brexit, including the other one that's on the front page right now.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
So, why aren't these high paying trucking jobs reappearing now that Brexit happened? And if this were somehow a EU problem, why aren't the trucking firms making bank off of all that cheap Eastern European labor?
- lucian1900 6y ago
  Lots of firms and the banks that own and fund them have been making a killing out of exploiting us Eastern Europeans, actually. All of this while enforcing privatisations, austerity and deregulation in our countries to force us to accept such low wages, both abroad and at home. The high paying jobs won’t come back without class struggle. Just because the periphery of the EU was pillaged to such an extreme doesn’t mean the working class in the centre wasn’t exploited too.
- tored 6y ago
  Rebuilding an industry takes time, those resources that was previously allocated to this industry is now allocated elsewhere and need to reallocate again. Also the expertise that is required to run a business like this is either gone or doing something else.
  - makomk 6y ago
    Yeah, there's some fairly difficult (and somewhat expensive) training and testing involved in being a HGV driver. As I understand it, one of the ways the EU helped Eastern European truckers outcompete local ones is that they could use their own countries' HGV licenses to do deliveries that were entirely within the UK and didn't have to go to the hassle and expense of getting a UK one. (Wouldn't be surprised if there was something of a race to the bottom in licensing too.)
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      While HGV driving is certainly a skill, the difficulty level has come down quite a bit in the last 50 years. My dad used to drive an ERF LV with no power steering and a 9 speed unsynchronized gear box. Now most trucks drive like a very large car, automatic gearbox or, at the very least, a ZF fully synchronised gearbox.
    - glogla 6y ago
      You seem frame it like some kind of EU conspiracy to destroy UK, but what would be the alternative? Have every truck driver have the license for every country they go through or deliver to? Can you imagine how much of a pain it would be for a truck driver to keep up 10+ licenses and for the logistics people to plan things when only some drivers can go to only some countries? Also, if the required knowledge is the same, why is getting UK license so much more of a hassle than in other countries?
      - thatguy0900 6y ago
        I don't think he was ascribing any kind of malice to the EU. You can do something sensible that still has negative repercussions.
- bvaldivielso 6y ago
  To be honest, this is not something that would happen overnight. I don't think it will happen, but it's too early to say
- oji0hub 6y ago
  > So, why aren't these high paying trucking jobs reappearing now that Brexit happened? In the last couple of weeks? While the entire world is closed due to Corona?
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    Regardless, high paying truck driving jobs are long gone. There is more chance of driverless trucks in the next 10 years than a return to well paying jobs. Same as high paying manufacturing jobs in Detroit.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    It had years of preparation time, you'd think some company would start finding a workforce for a post Brexit world.
    - esotericimpl 6y ago
      Did you read the article? The rules were announced like a month ago. There’s zero time to plan because the Tory government has been lying through the entire brexit fiasco. There’s no plan because there’s no more single market. Uk is in for a world of hurt with zero gain. The sun set long ago on the British empire, now the sun is setting on the uk as a mediocre economic power.
    - KineticLensman 6y ago
      > It had years of preparation time Preparation for (unspecified) 'treaty' or 'no-treaty' or what?
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        If cheap Eastern European competition was the cause of the decrease in pay, the kind of treaty shouldn't matter much. The competition is gone, the companies will now be forced to pay a solid British wage.
  - microtherion 6y ago
- brigandish 6y ago
  We could ask the same of the rest of the world economy after large parts of China were locked down at the beginning of the pandemic and people wondered where to buy masks and ventillators. Infrastructure and jobs are slower to appear than opportunity because capital is required upfront and the skills can't be downloaded, they must be trained or moved in. Long term this kind of thing will lead to new jobs and decent wages that force technological innovation because businesses and the politicians they employ can't push costs down by importing cheap labour. Or, as the Guardian would probably predict, Britain will run out of food and people will starve. Which do you think is more likely?
  - pwm 6y ago
    > Long term this kind of thing will lead to new jobs and decent wages that force technological innovation because businesses and the politicians they employ can't push costs down by importing cheap labour. It would make me happy to be wrong but I envision even more inequality as a result of brexit. I just don't see it playing out in any way that would result in an objectively better quality of life for working people. Ironic how I, a highly paid immigrant, am concerned for their future.
    - brigandish 6y ago
      > I envision even more inequality as a result of brexit It's certainly possible but since inequality has risen since 1979[1], which correlates rather well with the UK's membership of the EU it might be hard to convince Brexit voters that they've made a mistake on that, especially at this early stage. I'm sure someone will be tempted to pipe up with "evil Tories!" or "Thatcher" but they'll have to contend with all the quotes from staunch Labour politicians against the EU (in whatever guise it was in at the time), let alone explaining how joining the project coincided with the slow down of the post war narrowing of inequality and did nothing to stop it increasing later. > I just don't see it playing out in any way that would result in an objectively better quality of life for working people Don't forget the sovereignty bit, one of the reasons the remain argument failed to resonate with so many was because it focused purely on economics (partly because of the weakness of that for remainers, partly because it reflects interests). Given what you say, that inequality continues to rise just as it was previously then to regain sovereignty will be a big win. [1] https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed
- herewegoagain2 6y ago
  Maybe they will? I think somebody will still ship stuff to the UK. Or are the predictions coming true and the British people will now starve to death because of the EU trade embargo?
notahacker 6y ago
At the time of the referendum, there was [as usual] a massive shortage of UK-based HGV/LGV drivers, 89% of whom were British with an average age of nearly 50, and pay had just gone up 5%. [1]http://www.repgraph.co.uk/files/reports/The%20driver%20shortage%20report.pdf http://www.repgraph.co.uk/files/reports/The%20driver%20short... The only bit that might be dominated by Eastern Europeans is the super long haul trips from Europe that Brexit is significantly reducing... I do agree that claims about how Britons couldn't get careers in lorry driving due to massive influxes of foreigners probably helped influence the result, but such claims would have been as fundamentally dishonest as the claims about leaving funding the NHS.

by makomk 6y ago

boomboomsubban 6y ago

So, why aren't these high paying trucking jobs reappearing now that Brexit happened? And if this were somehow a EU problem, why aren't the trucking firms making bank off of all that cheap Eastern European labor?

lucian1900 6y ago
Lots of firms and the banks that own and fund them have been making a killing out of exploiting us Eastern Europeans, actually. All of this while enforcing privatisations, austerity and deregulation in our countries to force us to accept such low wages, both abroad and at home. The high paying jobs won’t come back without class struggle. Just because the periphery of the EU was pillaged to such an extreme doesn’t mean the working class in the centre wasn’t exploited too.
tored 6y ago
Rebuilding an industry takes time, those resources that was previously allocated to this industry is now allocated elsewhere and need to reallocate again. Also the expertise that is required to run a business like this is either gone or doing something else.
- makomk 6y ago
  Yeah, there's some fairly difficult (and somewhat expensive) training and testing involved in being a HGV driver. As I understand it, one of the ways the EU helped Eastern European truckers outcompete local ones is that they could use their own countries' HGV licenses to do deliveries that were entirely within the UK and didn't have to go to the hassle and expense of getting a UK one. (Wouldn't be surprised if there was something of a race to the bottom in licensing too.)
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    While HGV driving is certainly a skill, the difficulty level has come down quite a bit in the last 50 years. My dad used to drive an ERF LV with no power steering and a 9 speed unsynchronized gear box. Now most trucks drive like a very large car, automatic gearbox or, at the very least, a ZF fully synchronised gearbox.
  - glogla 6y ago
    You seem frame it like some kind of EU conspiracy to destroy UK, but what would be the alternative? Have every truck driver have the license for every country they go through or deliver to? Can you imagine how much of a pain it would be for a truck driver to keep up 10+ licenses and for the logistics people to plan things when only some drivers can go to only some countries? Also, if the required knowledge is the same, why is getting UK license so much more of a hassle than in other countries?
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      I don't think he was ascribing any kind of malice to the EU. You can do something sensible that still has negative repercussions.
bvaldivielso 6y ago
To be honest, this is not something that would happen overnight. I don't think it will happen, but it's too early to say
oji0hub 6y ago
> So, why aren't these high paying trucking jobs reappearing now that Brexit happened? In the last couple of weeks? While the entire world is closed due to Corona?
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Regardless, high paying truck driving jobs are long gone. There is more chance of driverless trucks in the next 10 years than a return to well paying jobs. Same as high paying manufacturing jobs in Detroit.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  It had years of preparation time, you'd think some company would start finding a workforce for a post Brexit world.
  - esotericimpl 6y ago
    Did you read the article? The rules were announced like a month ago. There’s zero time to plan because the Tory government has been lying through the entire brexit fiasco. There’s no plan because there’s no more single market. Uk is in for a world of hurt with zero gain. The sun set long ago on the British empire, now the sun is setting on the uk as a mediocre economic power.
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
    > It had years of preparation time Preparation for (unspecified) 'treaty' or 'no-treaty' or what?
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      If cheap Eastern European competition was the cause of the decrease in pay, the kind of treaty shouldn't matter much. The competition is gone, the companies will now be forced to pay a solid British wage.
- microtherion 6y ago
brigandish 6y ago
We could ask the same of the rest of the world economy after large parts of China were locked down at the beginning of the pandemic and people wondered where to buy masks and ventillators. Infrastructure and jobs are slower to appear than opportunity because capital is required upfront and the skills can't be downloaded, they must be trained or moved in. Long term this kind of thing will lead to new jobs and decent wages that force technological innovation because businesses and the politicians they employ can't push costs down by importing cheap labour. Or, as the Guardian would probably predict, Britain will run out of food and people will starve. Which do you think is more likely?
- pwm 6y ago
  > Long term this kind of thing will lead to new jobs and decent wages that force technological innovation because businesses and the politicians they employ can't push costs down by importing cheap labour. It would make me happy to be wrong but I envision even more inequality as a result of brexit. I just don't see it playing out in any way that would result in an objectively better quality of life for working people. Ironic how I, a highly paid immigrant, am concerned for their future.
  - brigandish 6y ago
    > I envision even more inequality as a result of brexit It's certainly possible but since inequality has risen since 1979[1], which correlates rather well with the UK's membership of the EU it might be hard to convince Brexit voters that they've made a mistake on that, especially at this early stage. I'm sure someone will be tempted to pipe up with "evil Tories!" or "Thatcher" but they'll have to contend with all the quotes from staunch Labour politicians against the EU (in whatever guise it was in at the time), let alone explaining how joining the project coincided with the slow down of the post war narrowing of inequality and did nothing to stop it increasing later. > I just don't see it playing out in any way that would result in an objectively better quality of life for working people Don't forget the sovereignty bit, one of the reasons the remain argument failed to resonate with so many was because it focused purely on economics (partly because of the weakness of that for remainers, partly because it reflects interests). Given what you say, that inequality continues to rise just as it was previously then to regain sovereignty will be a big win. [1] https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed
herewegoagain2 6y ago
Maybe they will? I think somebody will still ship stuff to the UK. Or are the predictions coming true and the British people will now starve to death because of the EU trade embargo?

notahacker 6y ago

At the time of the referendum, there was [as usual] a massive shortage of UK-based HGV/LGV drivers, 89% of whom were British with an average age of nearly 50, and pay had just gone up 5%. [1]http://www.repgraph.co.uk/files/reports/The%20driver%20shortage%20report.pdf http://www.repgraph.co.uk/files/reports/The%20driver%20short... The only bit that might be dominated by Eastern Europeans is the super long haul trips from Europe that Brexit is significantly reducing... I do agree that claims about how Britons couldn't get careers in lorry driving due to massive influxes of foreigners probably helped influence the result, but such claims would have been as fundamentally dishonest as the claims about leaving funding the NHS.