Hey y’all, I suppose I’m here to vent and look for advice.
I’m a professional driver, and I recently started at a new company that is a household name — local position, they trained me and got my CDL uprated from a B to an A, but they’re also shafting me hard. Training wage was $22, now it’s supposed to be $24, and $26 in July. Yet to see the proper $24 I’ve supposed to have been getting.
My position is a dual-job one, and from what the contract and the managers claimed — I’d only really be in the secondary (retail $17hr) position when truck routes were slow in the winter — this turned out not to be the case as I’m now stuck in that position for a quarter of my working time.
That’s less of an issue than the fact they just fucked me out of my vision and dental coverage, that I elected, claiming that I waived the coverage. And as such, they’re sitting on their hands, trying to gaslight me and tell me that I’m SOL until next year. I’m also going to be getting a surprise $120 a paycheck premium hike that was not in the health insurance documentation for my spouse and I being over the pseudoscience bullshit bmi threshold for obesity. My spouse is heavy, I’m not. I’m 5’6”, 190lbs, but a lot of that is muscle — I’m in a manual labor field after all. It’s sink or swim in touch freight.
The slap in the face is that the whole reason I went to this job and took a massive pay cut during training and won’t exceed the wages I made at my last job until July…. Was the Cadillac, or at least Lincoln health insurance and benefits, and getting my license uprated.
I’m making drastically less than I did at my previous temp parcel delivery job, and I’m supporting my disabled husband who is currently undermployed, and we both needed that coverage. The vision is less consequential, but between losing the buy-up dental plan that covered near $3000 of dental work for the both of us for the year, and the additional ~$3100 in health insurance I’m going to have to pay for… I feel like I’ve taken three steps forward and seven steps back.
I’m really fucking stressed by this bullshit, I’m at my wit’s end, and I’m strongly considering breaking my contract at the six month or year mark… Seven years of Class B experience in Florida and I barely broke above $15 an hour for all but seven months of it. I just moved 3000 miles across the country to pursue a better life for me and mine in the PNW…I’m tired of being fucked.