"Long-Haul Sweatshops" [opinion], Mar. 9, 2016

...[The trucking] industry is in crisis, with drivers leaving in droves because of low pay and poor working conditions. A big part of the problem is that when it comes to long-haul trucking, the government’s focus has been almost entirely on road safety. That’s not a misplaced concern...[but] it overlooks a critical concern: the well-being of the drivers themselves...leaves them exposed to inhumane and demeaning work conditions... Truckers...work 14-hour days routinely and continuously, often without weekends, sick pay or holiday pay... 

This mistreatment doesn’t just harm the drivers. By forcing experienced workers to leave the industry, it leads employers to hire younger and less capable drivers...

It also undermines truck-safety rules themselves: As long as drivers aren’t behind the wheel, the Department of Transportation lets employers do what they want with their drivers — which usually means they get back on the road unrested and irritated, hardly the person you want driving an 18-wheeler.

...[The] few labor laws that do exist have been passed piecemeal, so they do more harm than good... Congress needs to give the Department of Labor the power to regulate truck drivers’ working conditions...to extend the variety of workplace protections available to almost all American workers to the millions of men and women driving the nation’s commercial trucking fleet.