In the Shadows

Today's Thoughts By Jeff Head 10/17/12 In The Shadows

I was having a conversation today with a friend. We were banging back and forth the pros and cons of EOBR’s (electric on board recorders) when we stumbled into the area of drivers standing their ground and using the whistle blowers act to stop companies from pushing drivers into driving beyond what is safe or legal. “All a driver has to do is turn the company in and all will be just fine” if I understand the position taken by my friend.

So I wondered, is this how most people think whistle blowing goes and standing your ground to run safe and legal goes? One quick phone call and everything is hunky-dory when you wake up in the morning. Well, speaking from experience on this matter, I just wanted to walk you through some of my own experiences with this sort of thing. Try to relate to you, the reader, what you can expect once you have been pushed so far, that you consider picking up that phone or writing that letter or refusing to your boss praying that you still have a job because you decided not to run in a unsafe or illegal fashion.

Walk with me if you will to a time and place a long time ago in my life. The specifics of the situation not as important as to what I went through on a personable level as I decided to stand up and do the right thing. About twenty drivers doing what it took to get the job done and just one, myself, deciding that what we were doing was for too dangerous and illegal to continue on.

First comes the standing up part. You stand there in front of all these people and speak your mind. Looks and then the comments come. You’re fighting to make things safer and the majority of the drivers want you to just shut up. The money is too good for them and the last thing they want is for you to be in there rocking the boat.  As things progress, you start losing friends. You find yourself losing runs and your pay drops. Before long, you find yourself a minority of one, standing alone demanding to be allowed to run safe and legal. They will not fire you because they know lawyers will get involved. But they cannot keep you around rocking that boat so you slowly start seeing a diminished paycheck. They start starving you out. First slowly, and then as they hire the driver that will replace you, at much faster rate.

But you still insist on standing your ground. Your wife at home backs you, your one last remaining friend. But you know she is worried. Bills to pay and feeding children is hard to do with a spouse more interested in running safe and legal than paying the bills.  And with her backing, you decide to not allow this company get away with breaking the laws. Get away with starving out good and decent truckers. Someone somewhere has to start standing up to these guys. So you decide to take it up to the next level. A letter, a phone call, a scream for help from outside authorities.

Then you wait, and you wait, and you endure the looks, the slander, the whispered promises of what is going to happen to you if you do not straighten up or quit. You wait without even a word from anyone letting you know that you letter even reached their desk. Then, one day you walk in and the proper authorities are all over the place and everyone is looking straight at you with death in their eyes.

You squealed they say. It had to be you. You were the only one that was saying anything about this stuff. You just screwed up our paychecks and buddy; let me tell you, do not let us catch you alone out in that parking lot. So now you are afraid for your life. You are afraid for your family’s life. You stood your ground and decided to run safe and legal and not one of those authorities is taking any notice of what is happening to you. You, are all alone.

So you spend the next week looking into the shadows seeking out the slightest movement. You wonder if a bullet will find its way through the wall of your bedroom one night. You watch and wait for them to find the slightest reason to fire you. Your life becomes a living hell. Every time you meet someone out and about where no one can see, you just wait for the fist to come flying your way.

But they are too smart for that. The company tells them that no one, I repeat no one touches him. They know that this will bring on a law suit worth millions. But you are left working at a job that most of your co-workers would just assume see you dead. You find a strange thing here. You do meet some out where no one can see them talking to you. They shake your hand and apologize for being so hard on you in front of the crowd. They tell you that they are proud to know someone that has the guts to stand up for running safe and legal. Then, the next time you see them; they stand with the crowd and kick you down. They have no guts of their own to do the right thing.

The outcome of all this is that you find you cannot stand looking over your shoulder every day at work. You cannot wait for the inevitable firing that is sure to come. You cannot keep searching those shadows, waiting for the few that will eventually connect your head with a baseball bat. You end up quitting before you break, before you completely resign to the nervous breakdown that is sure to come. Then you get to go home and explain to your family just why it is you no longer have a paycheck to pay the rent with, to buy them food with.

Standing your ground and demanding to run safe and legal is not something one should take lightly. Know before you go there that as you fight these battles you will find yourself standing there alone, cold and hungry. No one will openly support you and no one will stand up and help you. Your ability to support your family will be wiped away. You may find as I did that your retirement plan and your medical insurance will become a thing of the past. You may not be able to find another job once the whispers get around that you forced a company to run legal, to run safe. And for years you will meet people that when they see you, they will turn their back on you and walk away.  You will never be able to be comfortable wherever you go. Your past will always find you somehow. You were the one that squealed. You, yes you; did what no other had the guts to do, you stood up for safe and legal trucking and you will pay that price until the day that they burry you.

Whistle blowing, not for wussies

Be safe peeps.

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