I disagree. Never give up the good fight my brother.
I'm not giving up my fight. I never have. But I now fight for myself and close friends. I'm in an area that always had a strong union presence, but after Hoffa got elected, our power took a big hit. We used to have one of the stronger unions in the nation, but now...well, it sucks. And as a result, the majority of drivers hired after Hoffa were burners or apathetic about fighting management BS. "Hey, I just want to do my job and go home..."
Sound familiar?
I did 21 years in package car, six years as a preloader, and I've been in feeders since March '11. I'm in one of the bigger hubs in the nation, and in just a year and a half, things have gotten progressively worse. Where I work, feeders is now as bad, maybe worse than PC, as far as management harassment goes. Our Feeder manager is a real peach. He'll push around any driver that he thinks he can, and unfortunately, that is a large number of our drivers. When I came back here, I filed and won a grievance against this manager, and since then, he's been watching me. Now this doesn't intimidate me, because I follow all methods, drive under the speed limit and safety is my ONLY priority. Of course, my numbers are bad, according to Big Brother, but my only concern is keeping my rig between the digits of the road.
The big problem, is now, so many new PC drivers come back to feeders with the same mindset that they had in PC. They drive with the hammer down, they skip their meal, they do a piss-poor job pre-tripping their equipment--which is vital in feeders--and they get intimidated by management. These drivers put a huge strain on drivers like me, who do everything by the book. Things are the same in PC, I know, and this message board is proof.
I have given nothing up. But now the 'brotherhood' is a thing of the past. That's just the reality. I fight for myself and my buddies. It used to be, you fought for your buddies, but you also fought for the ones you didn't know, couldn't see and the ones that hadn't come up yet. But those days are gone, I'm afraid.