Catherwood LibraryILR School

by Michael H. Belzer

"Workers in nineteenth-century sweatshops earned low wages and worked long hours in unsanitary and unsafe surroundings. More than a century later these same characteristics have emerged in much of the trucking industry as a result of competitive forces. Sweatshops on Wheels describes the transformation of the trucking industry from a complacent backwater into a competitive powerhouse and the effect of that transformation on truckers. The interstate trucking industry was among the first to deregulate, and it experienced some of the most extreme effects - both positive and negative - of competition. Within five years, truckers transformed themselves from broad utility service providers into niche specialists, creating many distinct service and labor markets... Michael H. Belzer, a leading expert on labor and trucking issues with first-hand experience in the industry, asks us to take a look at the dark side of competition, challenging us to reexamine current public policy trends that have replaced institutional regulation with regulation by the market." [from the dust jacket] (prd, 10/00)