For the record: this type of debt-slavery job is in large part what led to the rise and power of labor unions in the US. If you're reading HN and are a US citizen, you owe those early organizers for the fact that your life isn't like the life of these truckers.
Isn't there some eponymous law about organizations eventually prioritizing self-preservation over their original mission, especially if the original mission has been accomplished? (Not that it has in this case, obviously.)
Sure, but that doesn't mean that commoditized jobs like those don't deserve collective bargaining of some kind. I'd like to believe that unionship is possible without descending into mindless self preserving beuracracy or as a tool for the mob
That's it! I tried googling it, but I kept thinking Stross coined it.
When I read some of the things companies get away with in employment agreements nowadays, I wonder whether "the original mission" has really been accomplished.
You're definitely right. But what I mostly meant was that we do have laws on the books now that protect workers from at least the most flagrantly egregious exploitative practices of the past century.