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.
Pretty sure literally nobody here said that
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.
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.
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.
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?
Pretty much it. Unless there’s an infringement of labor law. I don’t know where they work or much about other countries labor laws.
They would probably need to hire a lawyer in this case. Unions usually also help in this cases.
Also of you try to get your peers to unionize they “find a reason” to fire you for something totally unrelated
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.
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.
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.That’s the idea. Replace them with driverless vehicles.
truckgpt will be here soon, unfortunately
The IT lackey just trying to make ends meet has no say in this process.
ah, the just following orders guy
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.
idk man, it only happened like 80 years ago. seems to be more relevant than ever.
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
Nice
I work in an office with cameras ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What’s their justification for needing them?
I sure hope they don’t use the word “team.” Because that ain’t it.
Its an office space we lease. I am not sure who originally installed them as they were there when we moved in.
We do manage them and retain the recordings though.
If i were a new employee I would see it as a lack of trust. Also as some kind of buy-in to the idea that you must be doing “justifiable” actions every minute of the day.
And that’s completely understandable.
But I know, at least in our case, it’s just there for insurance purposes in case something happens. Which, thankfully nothing has.
…and you’re okay with being recorded all day long, just like that?
I understand the practical limitations of privacy. But as the IT admin i am also the one who manages the cameras and access to them so that helps.
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
Doubt it
Lol I don’t care about OP getting caught. This isnt the r/goodlifeadvice
Man i have had drivers i work go full on road rage. No really he reached up and tried to tuen off the camera. Im not sure if had a fake button or he jist pressed the wrong on. Bit he the grabbed a gun and got out. This was after pushing a car in the cement baracade.
Its crqzy what some people do in cars
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.
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.
-
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
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.
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.
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- Talk to your union
- If you don’t have a union, form one
- If no one else cares, get a new job trucking
You seem kinda despairing and dismissive of the obvious answer… talking to your union.
You have no power over your employer, but your union does.
Additionally, and this is kinda wild but, have you spoken to your supervisor? What did they say? Did you explain what it is about it that’s so annoying?
I’ve worked as a consultant for companies that use this type of thing and most disable the verbal warnings and stuff because they’re not helpful in any way.
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.
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.
“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.”
I would get another job. During your exit interview, make sure they know this is the sole reason you are leaving.
its trucking they dont care (:
It’s trucking, you should stop dismissing a union
Yeah, talk to your union about this.
Alright, so you probably can’t get rid of it, but you can make it look like it’s defective. Make it look like it’s sending way too many false positives. Find somewhere where you can get away with making obvious mistakes and then make like fifty of them in a row. “Why would I, an intelligent human being, just sit in the middle of an empty street doing donuts in an 18-wheeler for 10 straight minutes? I have a job to do,” you say. If you got one of those “constantly monitoring everything you say” things Amazon tried rolling out, just start spouting random gibberish. Some pencil-pusher at HQ sees a transcript come back that just says “reptile shoestring meridian front sawdust henway ball Amtrak septuagint ladder correct horse battery staple java thorpe 2 Chainz” over and over for like 40 pages, worst-case scenario he’s not gonna read it, best-case scenario he’s gonna think the company’s paying way too much for shit that don’t work.
Correct horse battery staple… I see you xkcd reference.
https://xkcd.com/936These things are smarter / dumber than that. They talk directly to the engine and transmission with canbus to record operating conditions. And they have a dedicated GPS antenna. Then they generate a live report from that data that is sent over a dedicated cell connection.
Talking nonsense to it or driving in circles wont fool it. I recommend physical sabotage that mimics installation failure.
You’d have to get everyone with the system to do the same, otherwise it looks like 1 unit is bad. After replacing it, they’ll know something’s up if one dudes unit is putting out gibberish
Shit in the glove compartment to assert dominance.
Are you talking about a commercial truck or you personal vehicle? If it’s a truck you drive as your job, you’re probably screwed. I’d be pissed as hell, but I don’t imagine there’s much you can do other than quit. If it’s your private vehicle, let me know the company selling it so I never buy one of their vehicles.
company truck
That sucks. I’m not sure what options you have. Are you union?
no
Why the fuck not?
not everyone has that option
See previous comment.
A well placed magnet might help…
Ive been saying we need to be developing consumer grade emps before its too late
