And the debate over whether these "owner-operators" are wage workers or not occurred in the U.S. in the 1970s.
Here's what Staughton Lynd wrote, in his capacity as a labor lawyer and labor historian, about the 1974 Steel Haulers Strike in a Radical America journal in 1975:
Quote:
However, truckdrivers are employees like other workers and face essentially the same problems. This is true even of owner-operators, whose essential contention in the work stoppage underway as this is being written is that they are not small business men, subject to the anti-trust laws, but employees protected by the National Labor Relations Act. Truckdrivers own their own tools (if owner-operators) or (even if company drivers) have more control over their conditions of work than the assembly-line worker. These circumstances contribute to the elan of teamster rebels, just as underground work, danger, and the cultural isolation of Appalachia no doubt have something to do with the remarkable spirit and solidarity of miners. Still it is a dangerous error, which offers no real help to the dogged men and women seeking to change the Teamsters union, to suppose that the problems faced by truckdrivers are fundamentally unlike the problems confronting miners, autoworkers, steelworkers, and the rest of us.
Sounds like a good enough reason to show these truckers' actions our working class solidarity.
Truckers’ strike more than doubles in size overnight
Fundamental institutional improvements and right to collective bargaining top the list of demands
한겨레
» INCHEON - Members of the Incheon branch of the Korean Transport Workers’ Union, which launched a nationwide strike on June 13, stand face to face with police who are standing guard against the protest march in the Hang neighborhood on June 13.
More than 10,000 truckers nationwide have stopped driving, after a truckers’ union began a general strike on June 13. As a result, the nation’s main logistics hubs in the nation in Busan, Pyeongtaek, and Uiwang have halted their operations, causing a logistics crisis. The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs estimates that as of noon on the first day of the strike, the number of truckers participating in the strike doubled from 4,500 to over 10,000 in just one day.
The reason for the strike is simple. The chronic oversupply of trucks and the complicated system of subcontractual agreements, combined with high oil prices, have led more and more truckers, whether members of unions or independent operators, to participate in the strike. The crisis could easily be resolved with policies to ease these two problems, but there does not seem to be an easy solution for either one.
One possible solution would be for the Korea Cargo Transport Workers’ Union, the government, cargo owners and transport firms to agree on lowering oil costs, readjusting transport rates to a realistic level and introducing a standard rate system. But this will not be easy.
The government says that it will subsidize oil costs to a certain extent if diesel fuel prices exceed 1,800 won a liter, but unionized truckers are doubtful about the effect of such a measure, saying they will already have posted a deficit when the cost of diesel fuel reaches 1,800 won a liter.
Regarding the readjustment of transport rates, truckers are demanding a rate hike of at least 30 percent, while companies want to keep it at around 10 percent. However, even if the two sides were to compromise on transport fees, it would not get to the root of the problem. As long as oil prices follow an upward trend, the problem with transport rates will appear again.
The standard rate system, under which a base rate is fixed according to the volume and size of cargo, should be institutionalized. However, for truck drivers it is a Maginot line, similar to the minimum wage system for hourly employees. Due to objections from within the industry, the system will likely be adopted after a considerable period of time as a “recommendation,” without binding force.
According to a survey of 1,253 truck drivers conducted May 24-31 by the Research Institute for Transportation Labor Policy, up to 30.5 percent of respondents want fundamental institutional improvements, instead of an immediate drop in diesel fuel prices or a transport rate hike.
What unionized truckers wanted most is the right to collective bargaining. They think that they can deal directly with cargo owners only when their right to collective bargaining is guaranteed and believe that this will then lead to improvements in a complicated structure of subcontractual agreements, which aim to eliminate the middleman in logistics deals.
For this reason, the cargo transport workers’ union is urging the government to pressure cargo owners so that they can negotiate with them directly, even if that will be difficult right now.
The government, however, does not agree, and says that it cannot serve as a mediator in the negotiations because cargo owners are not laborers, but self-employed people. Having direct negotiations with cargo owners collectively is considered collusion under the fair trade law, according to the government. Cargo owners have also declared that they will only talk with agencies or transport companies.
Experts note that the government, which should be working to improve the long-standing problem of the poor structure of the individual cargo transport business, is forcing truckers to go on strike by being lax in dealing with the situation.