Posts tagged transportation industry
California’s War on Autonomous Trucking
May 14, 2026 // As structural economic factors push costs for the freight industry and consumers higher, the American public has three options. It can accept higher prices for all transportation services; it can enlarge the labor pool through immigration; or it can embrace new technology that improves transportation productivity and resolves the Baumol dilemma. Becerra, Steyer, and Khanna have followed the path prescribed by FreightWaves’ Fuller, promising to force higher freight costs onto the public. While the Golden State’s coalition politics might require genuflecting to the Teamsters, Californians are bound to notice before long that they’re paying higher prices than people in other states while also lagging behind them technologically.
Op Ed: Workers deserve a vote
April 28, 2026 // Collective bargaining in this industry works because both sides have to live with what they negotiate. An arbitrator on a federal deadline doesn’t have to live with anything. They write the contract and move on. But the district and the workers are stuck with it for two years. That’s the bill’s core flaw: it assumes labor negotiations only ever go slowly because of bad faith, but really, they often just take time to get right. Rushing that process and handing the outcome to an outside panel doesn’t produce better contracts.