What Are Over-the-Road Truckers Paid For? Evidence from an Exogenous Regulatory Change on the Role of Social Comparisons and Work Organization in Wage Determination

Stephen Burks and Frederick Guy

No 6375, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using evidence from recent work on truckers and disaggregated older data prior researchers did not have, we revisit a classic topic and find some new answers. We focus on differentials in average annual earnings at the firm level among mileage-paid over-the-road tractor-trailer drivers ("road drivers") employed by US for-hire trucking companies, before and after economic deregulation. Road driver output is individualized, and pay is on the basis of a piece rate (mileage). However, road drivers work under two distinct logistical systems – less-than-truckload [LTL], and truckload [TL] – associated with two different forms of work organization. We find that – contrary to the predictions of Rose (1987) – not only are road drivers for LTL companies paid more than those for TL companies, but in LTL the union earnings premium was maintained following deregulation and union coverage fell slowly, while in TL both the union differential and union coverage fell sharply. We review relevant theoretical explanations: payment for cognitive abilities or non-pecuniary disamenities; standard efficiency wage models based on independent utilities; sharing of product market rents; equity concerns resulting from social comparisons between employee groups; and differences in work organization as a source of union rents or quasi-rents. Only equity concerns, for the LTL earnings differential, and quasi rents (but not a union threat effect, contrary to Henrickson and Wilson (2008)), for union coverage and premium in LTL, are consistent with our empirical results. Both earnings differentials are based on differences in work organization, rather than differences in the workers or the work itself.

Keywords: less-than-truckload (LTL); trucker; trucking; work organization; rent-sharing; quasi-rent; cognitive ability; compensating differential; equity; fair wage; truckload (TL); regulation; deregulation; union premium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J42 L92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2012-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6375.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6375

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().