Unfair competition?
Source
This morning I heard on the radio that it was examined that in case of a accident where a truck was involved very often a foreign driver was involved. They even gave the nationality of those drivers:
- Polish
- Romanian
- German
I tried to think of a reason for this typical statement that is where explicitly drivers of those countries where mentioned. And I remembered a discussion from some some years ago (I think a year or two). employees in the Dutch transport industry were complaining in the national media about truck drivers from the eastern part of Europe stealing their jobs.
The situation was that a lot of employers were hiring drivers from east Europe because they are much cheaper for the company. To avoid legal problems they bought Trucks with a east european licence plate and let them transport dutch trailers.
From that time on there indeed happened quite some more accidents on the dutch highways. Sometimes the cause was alchohol, sometimes exhaustion because drivers where out for day's without a good sleep. (although that is illegal cause there are laws for the amount of hours one can drive). Without giving any opinion about it, you can say that at least it's a bad development from the point of view of secure driving.
Perhaps therefore the outcome of the investigation was to be expected ?
The things I then immediatly ask myself are:
- is it generalizing for people from the eastern part of Europe that they drink excessive alcohol?
- Is it an culture thing?
- What is the reason that a lot of drivers seem to need to drink?
- Is it boredom being away from home such a long time?
The same goes for the construction industry, there are a lot of east european people working at construction sites. The stay in little holiday houses and people say they are causing a lot of trouble.. Well to be honest I never have seen any troubles, but then again I am not in the middle of a neighbourhood where a lot of people resides...
But what I do think is typical that unemployment in construction and transport is decreasing even with so many foreigners being active in those industries, so I only can conclude those 'hands' are necesarry if we want to develop...
The loads of negative press I blame on the complaining culture of the most Dutch people. Yes we are good in complaining, but view things from different perspectives is hard for us ;)....
Have a great day
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A lot of times I think truck drivers get paid per run, so the more they can fit into a week the more they are going to get paid. The employer is just trying to make and save as much money as they can, so they don't really care if the driver is running more hours than they are legally allowed. They probably have some deniability in the matter too. They can say we trained them and told them what the maximum hours were, it isn't our fault they chose to break that. I think things like this happen in a lot of industries. It is just sad that in the trucking industry they are putting other drivers lives at risk.
You're so right. Employers do often only mind one thing ,and thats money...to bad especially with lives at stake
Big unfair good post