You form a union and bargain with your employer. Thats about it though
Let me explain why companies are doing things like this. They’ll make unreasonable demands and when you make mistakes as a result, the AI will capture it and they’ll use that in court to blame you as the employee and try to hold you personally liable. This is their way of saying you’re nothing more than a liability to them. Fuck this system. I’d start demanding a new employment agreement to protect yourself.
Yea give up to A.I. that’s the only choice.
I think you misunderstand what a union does.
Try to fight your company without organisation and you will be giving up your job. Look up the laws wherever you are and form a union. Be smart about it though and dont get caught in the act of forming it.
Don’t be a pussy.
Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do. “Tattling” programs are quickly becoming a staple of any sort of logistical jobs. Companies will parade it around as if it keeps people safe, or it protects the honest employees. It’s designed to give them reasons to get rid of you.
I program tattling programs for non-logistical industry. It does let us know if people mistreat equipment or even break speed limits. But what pays the bills is predictive maintenance or responding to reactive maintenance needs more quickly. We can reduce scheduled maintenance for longer and prevent failed parts from causing too much damage.
Sure it’s a different industry but generally employees are expensive to hire and even more expensive to lose. Losing a job because of a number in an algorithm that decides to tattle is rare unless that employee is a total piece of shit that we were looking to sack for other reasons. Usually its a “Dude samsara told us you blew the speed limit in this town and we’re going to get fined out the wazoo and you’ll lose your DOT license. Dont do it again”. If they do stupid shit again and get caught by the police, they might lose their DOT status for some number of months and be unemployable until it is restored. So really it is a safeguard to prevent that from happening in the first place and helps them KEEP their jobs longer.
You speak the truth.
I know it sucks. And corps are playing with the automation line. They don’t want to replace too many jobs with automation because that will trigger the need for UBI to off-set the amount of jobless people no longer driving the economy. So, instead they’ve resorted to “churn and burn” practices. Things that allow them to burn people out and toss them aside and make it the workers fault.
Yeah, in a world where we are short of drivers and they are hiring questionable people, they are looking for reasons to fire you.
Doubly funny if OP is American, where you simply don’t need reasons to fire people.
Right to work is very misunderstood online. It’s not the freebie everyone seems to think it is.
If you terminate sometime without documented cause, you can’t deny their unemployment claims and must keep paying them in all 50 states.
The myth that they can fire you with no recourse is something they want everyone to believe so that nobody files for unemployment. when they’re entitled to it.
That’s definitely going to change in this political climate. There will be states where the head of the unemployment insurance will just stop paying at Trump’s direction and ignore court orders. MMW
Those Solera devices you’ve got are relatively common automotive IoT fleet trackers. They usually have gps antennas. They talk to the engine and transmission directly over canbus. Then they process that data and report what they see over a cell network. If they see nothing, they report that too with a heartbeat signal and various error codes.
Depending on the model, they sometimes have external cell antennas connected with a mini coaxial cable. Find it and unscrew it all the way, then re-screw it in by only 1 and a half rotations so it’ll hang on but barely. Then clip the nearest ziptie so the cable wobbles free. It’ll cause the nut on the coax to get a stress fracture in under a year. They will have to replace the gps/cell antenna module and those are like $300 a piece through Samsora. In the meantime you’ll get iffy signal responses. Don’t let them catch you cutting the zip tie on camera or you WILL lose your job.
Your truck will be in the maintenance shop relatively frequently at the request of whoever reads the reports for repair of that cell module. They won’t find anything wrong with it, scratch their butts, then just screw it back down and replace the ziptie.
Unscrew it and clip it again.
don’t let them catch you, you WILL lose your job
Hey director of IT for a trucking company here, i just want to reiterate this part!
Don’t fucking do this. Any of this advice. You WILL lose your job and we WILL blacklist you from the industry for this shit. Maybe if you drivers could actually mange your fucking log books and follow the safety regulations we wouldn’t need to have ELDs and camera and GPS and fucking canbus monitoring and annual inspections and all of the other “”“invasive nonsense”“” the government requires.
I dont want it either. Its all crazy expensive, annoying to manage, and I have to constantly deal with drivers complaining about it.
Sorry. I’m a little upset with this issue because its a constant issue i have at work. But no there is nothing you can do besides just get another job.
I just want to reiterate it again. Do NOT mess with the equipment your company has in your truck. At best you’ll just get fired but I’ve seen my company respond with legal measures in the past.
Maybe if you drivers could actually mange your fucking log books and follow the safety regulations we wouldn’t need to have ELDs and camera and GPS and fucking canbus monitoring
Those companies would deploy this shit anyways even if the logs were perfect. Anything to blame the employee can and will be deployed.
Those companies would deploy this shit anyways even if the logs were perfect.
I want to say that businesses are famous for spending enormous amounts of money to fix a solved problem sarcastically but I’ve been working too long to believe it.
Still, so much of the problem isn’t with the monitoring but the annoying middle-management response of stack-ranking all the drivers. Rather than just playing your hand, big employers are constantly trying to reshuffle and “optimize” staff in order to squeeze out an extra ounce of profit. And the end result is everyone being immiserated in order to give someone with a marginal fluctuation in performance a raise.
Anything to blame the employee can and will be deployed.
Shit rolls downhill.
Trucking is so funny. There is an adversarial relationship between the drivers and the office, which you can see in this comment.
The industry is trying to solve safety issues caused by the nature of long haul driving and maintenance of profit in logistics by companies that use their services.
Trucking used to be a way a person could provide for their family, remain independent, and feel in control. Now, trucking is an industry where you are trapped in a moving computer designed primarily to reduce the insurance rates of the company that employs them, because their business practices and demands were so dangerous, individuals truckers had to drive more hours, get paid less for those hours, and literally drive themselves, and other motorists around them when they crashed, to death.
Then they blame the truckers as they race to bottom in hiring. Don’t even get me started on nafta. Your industry sucks for the employees who are necessary to keep the economy moving.
The safe way to fight back is through the trucking unions, which don’t seem interested in getting rid of this invasive software.
But if every trucker did this they couldn’t blacklist them all.
Unions aren’t interested in pushing back against the invasive software because they know drivers haven’t been following the rules.
Basically nobody in the industry wants this. It makes it harder to do our jobs, it’s more annoying, and it’s crazy expensive. But it’s what you gotta do when drivers run 2 or 3 log books.
Yeah, this is a problem of pushing compliance to a level above the operator in an area where the perfection demanded by policy relies on traffic behaving perfectly, and drivers never experiencing delays or problems, to operate. The only way this goes away is a scarcity of drivers.
Someone who believes they know how to drive will suggest automated trucks, but the accident lawsuits will probably bankrupt the first companies.
It would work if you made lanes for self driving trucks.
You could then tie a bunch of trucks together, and have them run on this special lane.
This is brilliant! You can even let the front truck pull all the others tied behind it so you need fewer working engines.
What if you added guide rails to the lane so the trucks didn’t have to steer?
And we could manage traffic stops when one is going to cross another street so it can save on fuel for not having to stop!
End result? We turn into crabs. 🦀
Woah buddy, you’re just talking crazy now.
Yeah, and you assume other drivers won’t drive in the wrong lane
Because no one would drive in them ever, they would respect the sanctity of the truckpool lane.
You’re the fucking problem. Maybe if you treated people with humanity and worked towards a common solution instead of using technology to drain people’s souls, you wouldn’t have people that hate the shit you’re slinging.
What you do makes the world a worse place to live in.
He didn’t say he was management and bought the stuff. He said he worked in IT. So with any power to make decision across a fleet.
I appreciate you defending me, but I did say I was director of IT so unfortunately I am management. But it wasn’t me deciding to install this stuff on our fleet, it was the federal government.
The director of IT at a trucking company absolutely would have power over the devices used by said company.
you drivers could actually mange your fucking log books and follow the safety regulations
you are part of the reason everyone hates management. the overburden of society by technofascists like you will result in many horrible repercussions down the line.
giving nerds any power over workers was a mistake
Counterpoint: I would love to not be run over by a truck driver that decided that when redbull stops working a swig of whiskey will help him be awake after skipping the night sleep. You know how I know that I would love to not be in this situation? Because this exact situation happened to me and it sucks, even though I survived.
If anal probes is something that prevents heavy equipment operators from breaking the rules, so be it. I would prefer them not need that also.Personally I’m very pro-probe. All the probes, all the time.
Hey so it’s actually the federal department of transportation that decides we need super invasive tracking! And they decided that after a ton of accidents directly caused by drivers not paying attention and working crazy hours.
I also don’t want to pay or manage this crap but here we are.
So, what I’m hearing is “don’t struggle or it’s gonna hurt more”. I think this advice is horrible.
No. It’s two things.
-
Maybe truck drivers should have followed the rules better and drove safer. Drivers cooking their books have caused enormous amounts of harm and death, and that’s ignoring the huge loss of money when a driver crashes because they’ve been driving for 26hrs straight.
-
Don’t fucking damage company property. This is actually my biggest sticking point for this whole thing. I dont care if you like it or not, the hardware is not fucking yours and the hardware being there is part of your employment agreement. Don’t like it? Tough shit buddy take it up with the DOT.
That’s an awesome sermon from somebody who knows literally fuck all about trucking.
The industry created the problem by demanding that drivers go beyond any form of reasonable work, drive endless unsafe stretches and cook the books or they’re the ones getting canned. It’s an industry which downloads all the pain onto the drivers.
Shut the fuck up when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t just show up to scold people and make crap up and pull things out of your ass. You know nothing about trucking and that’s clear.
I like how you ignored the part that actually upsets me about this.
Don’t fucking damage company property
Look, Jim, I know you don’t like the explosive collar we bolted to your neck, but you’ve GOT to stop messing with company property
-you
No its more
This thing is not owned by you and is required by the federal government. Please dont damage our very expensive hardware
But yeah blow it up to an unreasonable level and anything sounds crazy.
The only part required by the govt is the electronic logbook. It doesnt need gps. It doesnt need ai. It doesnt need cell. It only needs the electronic logbook. So yeah - blow it up
Fun fact, ELDs require GPS. It’s easy to find public information. There is also this web page which goes into more details about the “why” we have to have ELDs installed in trucks.
And the cell service is to allow the actual device to communicate back to the parent. At my company we use Samsara and Motive.
We do not use any AI features because we don’t need them but I have talked to guys at other offices that do use it. Largely it’s because of insurance. You can get crazy discounts on insurance for running something with the AI tracking. There are also some AI programs that optimize routing but those are “”“AI”“” features not necessarily AI.
-
Reading this thread is really selling that dream job.
You all keep doing what you’re doing and there will be no drivers left to squeeze out and make their life even more miserable.The IT lackey just trying to make ends meet has no say in this process.
this is a similar argument to the nazis. this is how bureaucracy and management normalize oppressive conditions. a bunch of weak yes-men
Reductio ad Hitlerum is a really weird thing to pull out of your ass on this particular discussion.
I’m a little upset with this issue because its a constant issue i have at work.
maybe find a new job where you don’t act like completely garbage manager? or work to find a human centric solution rather than… oppressive digital technologies?
I hope you end up with a neurolink in your skull and are constantly monitored for wrongthink.
Well the whole bit about backing out the nut is to cause it to fail in a manner that looks more like a maintenance problem and not a driver problem. Even when stuff like that only happens on one cab, it’s not enough to point at a singular driver.
And yeah all of that advice comes with the rider that “you may be unemployable” afterwards.
Yeah I get that. But you aren’t clever and you aren’t the first one to think about that.
We will catch you
Eh, that’s never true. Some people will be caught. And the typical person who gets their CDL only works a few years before they realize the industry sucks for drivers and burnout.
I’m not going to claim a 100% catch rate, because that’s impractical.
But we absolutely do frequently fire drivers for tampering with their trackers. Theres about 15 layers of checks and balances preventing a driver from disconnecting or otherwise disabling it.
Man getting unemployment sounds like heaven.
My dude. How would you like a camera over your shoulder every minute of your workday, recording your every move? What might you do faced with that?
shown it my nuts
Name checks out
Or, conduct yourself with integrity. Advising someone to compromise their integrity is pretty shitty.
Eh. OP already told us they had no integrity. Ever met a truck driver? The overwhelming majority of them have no morals or integrity. There’s a reason why. It’s because they get to get paid for not being around people - it attracts people who suck. Not all truckers suck but the overwhelming majority of them do. I can’t post something that will suddenly make some of them read it and go “By gum… I should become a better person!” But I can post some shit that might make their boss’s job more difficult and possibly get OP fired which might be funny in a chaotic-evil kind of monday morning shitpost way.
Ever met a Lemmy poster? The overwhelming majority of them have no morals or integrity. There’s a reason why. It’s because they get to post while not being around people - it attracts people who suck. Not all posters suck but the overwhelming majority of them do. I can’t post something that will suddenly make some of them read it and go “By gum… I should become a better person!” But I can post some shit that might make their posting more difficult and possibly get OP banned which might be funny in a chaotic-evil kind of monday morning shitpost way.
You do me proud by copypastaing my shitpost
None of that elaborate rationalization you just performed changes anything. You admit you counseled something unethical, but you want to insist that reflects on OP, not on you. So now it’s not just a failure of integrity, but it’s also sophistry.
This is the reason Unions exist.
Individually you have no power. As a group you do have power to force them to revoke these decisions.
Your choice is joining a Union or not.
Ok, but what can OP do now? I support joining a union. But if there is none, then forming one takes time.
Is there anything that OP can do now? Quit, maybe?
Also of you try to get your peers to unionize they “find a reason” to fire you for something totally unrelated
- Talk to your union
- If you don’t have a union, form one
- If no one else cares, get a new job trucking
As much as others may hate it, hexbear has actually pinned great sources to start your own union.
Hexbear has a lot of good things, it’s just it’s users are sometimes a pain.
Do you have to violate laws/regulations laws to meet schedules? Perhaps malicious compliance and adhere to all laws. As some have said, a union could help. If you don’t have to violate laws/regulations to meet schedule, perhaps consider adhering to laws/regulations.
Shit in the glove compartment to assert dominance.
“You forgot your wife’s birthday again. Why can’t you be more like your cousin Jeffery? You need to lose weight.”
“Shut up!!”
“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Your options (pick any combination you please):
- do whatever you can do to make it more bearable in the short term (turn down volume of AI warnings, whatever else you can configure)
- Unionize
- Bargain with your company/Negotiate your contracts
- Get hired by a new company that gives a shit about their employees
- Become an owner-operator
- start a trucking firm with a bunch of other drivers that are fed up with that bullshit
- Find a different kind of job that doesn’t require AI to surveil and harass you.
Stick a chewing gum on the thing’s speaker and start singing songs with very dirty and explicit lyrics, like gangsta rap and Bloodhound Gang.
All day long, everyday.
Persuade your colleagues to do the same.
They will have an endless string of report notifications they can’t do shit about.
Fight smart.Edit: still the best thing to do is unionize as many others already suggested, but fighting on more than one front is a good tactic, wars are won by exhausting your opponent.
Hi. 3F Copenhagen member here. I believe the scaffolders club are organising something over a similar situation that is, however, less intrusive than yours. Your situation is like a horror story version of what the scaffolders are getting (GPS tracking, logging of their company vehicles. They don’t have AI… Yet…).
Do you have a union you can turn to?
Crazy idea I haven’t seen posted here, but hear me out:
Stop driving like a dick. Follow the rules of the road. Stop speeding. Stop swerving. Stop going over the lines at stop signs and traffic lights. ETC…
This will slow down the route by hours. That’s the only way that they’ll discontinue it, when they realize that it’s making the delivery routes slower.
and stop driving like a dick, you’re driving a fucking truck.
It’s never the speeder at fault, it’s always those damn {politicians, cops, other drivers, cameras} who are wrong.
Holy fuck you all are a bunch of callous assholes. Telling someone to “join a union” or “ask your union” about it are fucking mental. Do you really think OP is working a union gig or are you really that stupid to think you just go out to the union store and ask for one union card? How is this helpful to anyone who is in a non-union job working for a non-union company. I’ll bet you all are the same people that tell depressed people to “just be happy.” It’s just useless, if not ourtright malicious, advice to give someone.
There are two camps in this thread. On one side you have people saying to move to a workplace with a union. On the other hand you have people advising criminal retaliation, vandalism, sabotage, and fraud. And you have a problem with the unionists.
I have no problem with unions and I’m extremely pro-union. I’m also practical and not naive enough to think that you can join a union in every job. They don’t exist for a lot of jobs at all and you have to be very diligent to be able to form one without losing your job from unjustly being fired.
What I hate is people giving shitty advice so they can feel superior. “Join a union” is great advice if your job/field already has one. “Join a union” when someone has a work dispute with their clearly non-union employer is idiocy and belittling to the person that is asking the question. I made the analogy above, so I’ll turn your question on its head, do you think depressed people should just try to be happy? Because it’s the same level of advice as, “Join a union” in this instance.
No, it’s on the same level as “make major life changes” to either a depressed person, or someone working in a non-union environment. There is no analogy needed. Sometimes you cannot make major life changes, even if it might help with significant problems. But we don’t know that. It’s valid advice. Unlike everything else said in this thread.
Well, if it is not helpful advice for OP it is not bad advice.
It’s really not even advice. It’s just self aggrandizement and dumbass people looking for a circle jerk to join. It doesn’t address the issue that OP has in the slightest practical way, and is kind of callus to their actual problem.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted. You’re right. It’s insane that for some people “create a union” seems to be a magic solution that anyone can just magically do on their own.
There is a lot of magical thinking and ideology in this thread, very little grounded, human to human advice.
Give your truck a lobotomy.
Are you paid by the hour or per delivery? If by hour, malicious compliance. Stay 5mph below speed limit because you don’t want to be flagged. AI doesn’t recognize the street as such? Take a long detour, it didn’t allow me to take that route. It complains about overtaking? Never overtake ever again someone was to close to the truck when you tried to back in? Never back in again unless the premises is completely clear of people. Oh and find a better employer. An employer that doesn’t trusts its employees is never worth it.
It’s usually per mile if its long haul, which is the root of all the problems because that incentivizes the driver to go faster and spend less time on other things. And it fucks the driver over because they don’t get paid if they’re not moving, even if they’re waiting on someone else.
