Originally Posted by Stuart

Couldn't agree more brother, i'm not really bothered to be honest i make £30k a year, nice trips away back every weekend so i can't complain.

Originally Posted by outtaservice

£30k a year?? I think that's $60k/year at the current exchange rate.
And home on weekends? Wait a minute... what's the catch? The taxes
must be bad!

As for this immigrant stuff, I work with quite a few; Mexicans, Polish,
Russians.... I still get all the miles I need. No one has told me there's
no freight available because they gave it to one of the Mexicans.

Originally Posted by Sheepdancer

My pay never stays the same. My commissions get cut all the time. On the other side of the coin, when the demand for drivers is greater, my commissions go up.

Originally Posted by outtaservice

£30k a year?? I think that's $60k/year at the current exchange rate.
And home on weekends? Wait a minute... what's the catch? The taxes
must be bad!

As for this immigrant stuff, I work with quite a few; Mexicans, Polish,
Russians.... I still get all the miles I need. No one has told me there's
no freight available because they gave it to one of the Mexicans.

Originally Posted by Cluggy619

I'm not one for the conspiracy theories, however, if this dumb move allowing the Mexican national to invade our roads turns out to be beneficial, and all of the trucking industry benefits, I'll buy that steak dinner for you and your wife/girlfriend, and all of your kids. And I won't wait 20 years from now......same time, next year.

Originally Posted by redsfan

Sounds great! You have yourself a deal. Now I guess we just need to set some parameters on how we will define "benefits"? I am assuming that your side of the bet means that it will degrade the trucking industry within the same time frame? I just thought I would give you a reasonable timeframe for "all of the jobs to go south of the border" and "everyone to be driving for 15 cpm" so I pulled "20 years" outta my butt, but if you like to make it 1 year, fine by me.

So let's get this straight, if such a plan as is being discussed is enacted within the next year and the majority of current company drivers are still making a comparable wage acrossed the board as they are today AND the companies that do choose to engage in such practices see a benefit in it, I win, correct? On the other side if within this same year, we're all making 15 cpm to do the same job that we are doing today and the whole industry has gone to hell in a handbasket, you win? Sounds good to me, heck I may not be around in 20 years to collect.

Originally Posted by merrick4

Redsfan, nobody is talking conspiracy to wreck the economy. The fact is the rich are trying to get richer. Look none of us are economists here, and I don't pretend to know everything, but something isn't right here.

Sure sounds like the same conspiracy theories that are being discussed in at least two other threads on this board to me...

And what's wrong with the rich getting richer? I have no problem with the rich (or the poor, or the middle class for that matter) getting richer.

Now I don't know where these immigrants from New Zealand, but I do know about Spanish immigrants as much as a white gringo can know. I speak spanish and I talk to these people. We paint them all with a broad brush but illegal immigrants come in many different forms (maybe that's a bad word). In south Florida many from South America are educated and as a matter of fact they themselves look down on the Mexicans and Central Americans. you call one of them a mexican and you see what happens.

The "guest workers", and no, that's not the same thing as an immigrant, come to New Zealand from all over the world, including the US. I never paint them all with a broad brush. I try not to call anyone a Mexican who isn't Mexican, and actually I said they could be from any country including Mexico.

These Mexicans, and really I know many more Central Americans, will work like you can't believe and take all types of abuse. Many of them can't even read or write in their own language. They are very humble people. I don't care who you pay 14 cents a mile to, it's abuse. My whole point which I keep saying, is you are not bringing them up by hiring them at slave labor, but bringing us down.

I will agree with you to a certain extent, some of them are hard workers. I, personally have more experience with Mexicans than Central Americans as over the past 10 years or so we have utilized many Mexicans to cut and house tobacco. What I will tell you is it has nothing to do with saving money. We pay them the same rate that we would pay any American who will do the same job. As a matter of fact, we have to it's in the contract when we sign up for the program that provides these workers. It's not about saving money at all, where our benefit comes in is that we can count on a certain number of workers that we may not be able to find on our own. However, what my experience has shown me is that the longer they are here the more Americanized they become and for some reason a lot of them don't work quite as hard as they did when they first got here... Again, I'm not painting with a broad brush, there are some of them who continue to work just as hard as they ever have.

Also, I never stated anything about paying them 14 cpm, the OP mentioned 15 cpm, but I actually said the opposite. There will be no slave labor in a guest worker program, IMO. They will be paid the same wages as any American that does the same job.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was already asked to be a trainer as they need Spanish speaking trainers. So the fact is this thing is coming. What do they need spanish speaking trainers for if by law all drivers are supposed to speak and write English?

Turn on your CB and you'll already hear Spanish being spoken. That part is not coming, it's already here. I also hear other languages on there, but I am unable to understand them so I can't tell you what they are. My guess is that someone has trained these drivers so spanish speaking trainers must already exist. I agree, everyone should have to speak and read English since that is still our country's most used language. My assumption always was that maybe they knew enough english to get and use their CDL, but if there was another driver who primarily spoke spanish and they were talking to them it was easier to do this in their native tongue rather than their second language. Dunno? I'm fairly certain that if you and I ever met we would both speak to each other in english even though we were taught spanish as a second language?

Nobody seems to care until it affects them, here's a piece from the USA Today the other day:

Our view on Wall Street woes: Look who wants protection from foreign rivals now
With their own jobs, bonuses at risk, financial elite seek relief.
When Main Street jobs go overseas, Wall Street generally shrugs. The typical response from the nation's financial elite is that people who have lost work should tough it out and acquire new skills.

Now the tables may be turning, as Wall Street ponders its own potential job losses. Foreign companies are increasingly bypassing New York and listing their shares on overseas markets. If the trend continues, it could mean the migration of high-paying investment banking jobs.

The horror! Faced with this threat, Wall Street and its political supporters have sprung into action, commissioning studies and urging that the government help by easing post-Enron accounting regulations, adopting lawsuit reform and pre-empting state banking regulations.

Regulation and litigation are, to be sure, legitimate issues, ones that go well beyond Wall Street. But they are not why companies are listing on foreign exchanges. That is happening for the same reason that other industries have gone overseas — global competition.

New York has long been the world's financial center. Now bankers in other countries are mastering financial skills — much as others in past decades figured out how to produce textiles, cars and appliances — and are competing at prices that undercut New York. According to a study by the London Stock Exchange, for instance, New York firms' underwriting fees for initial public offerings of stock are about twice those charged throughout Europe.

Before Wall Street gets any relief from Washington, it should consider lowering its fees and expectations of exorbitant profits and bonuses. According to the New York comptroller's office, the average Wall Street bonus was a record-smashing $137,580 last year, hardly a sign of an industry in distress.

The pleas coming from Wall Street are akin to the National Association of Realtors arguing that the downturn in housing requires government action to help brokers.

The loss of financial services jobs would certainly be bad for New York and for anyone interested in being a U.S.-based investment banker. But from customers' perspective, the increased competition means more choice and lower fees.

Moreover, regulations are not designed to protect investment bankers. They are to protect investors and consumers. What do investors think? Some groups, like the mutual fund industry's Investment Company Institute, favor modest accounting law changes that fall far short of Wall Street's sky-is-falling attitude. Others, like the pension fund-oriented Council of Institutional Investors, are downright hostile to Wall Street's ideas.

The jobs in question are among the high-skill, high-wage ones that should drive the U.S. economy in a competitive age. But ultimately the way to keep them is by competing on the basis of price, quality and integrity.

That is something that Americans in other professions have come to know. Wall Street can do so as well.

Here's the link to the actual article: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/02/post_30.html

Originally Posted by redsfan

[I may be wrong on this, but I doubt any of us here are economists. I know I'm certainly not and I don't claim to be. The fact is that there are very little facts in this entire thread, rather it is mostly opinions including my own. I also thought it was funny that the evidence that you submitted to back up your post was nothing more than opinion either. In fact it even says "OPINION" right at the top of the page when you click on the url... I just love it when folks make statements and then offer an editorial or someone else's opinions to back up what they are trying to sell as facts.