Commentary
My late father-in-law, Mike Isetta, was a member of the Teamsters Union for 40 years, hated the union and all their practices for most of his years, and would be spinning in his tomb if he saw California’s latest attempt to turn independent truckers into dependent wage slaves or unemployed ex-drivers.
A little background: In California, there are approximately 170,000 truck drivers who supply 38 million residents with all the stuff of life, from the ground chuck in the supermarket to the Tylenol in the pharmacy to the 4K TV on your wall. Around 70,000 of them are independent owner-operators, and last week, they lost a massive battle against California AB5, a ham-fisted power grab that could force them to give up their independence, move out of state, or go out of business. Given the fragility of our current supply chain, the potential loss of 41 percent of its California links is the stuff of nightmares….