scholarly journals Fear, Resistance, or Anticipation? Older Truck Drivers’ Reactions to the Adoption of Automated Vehicles

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 977-977
Author(s):  
Amy Schuster ◽  
Jenna Van Fossen ◽  
Danielle Sperry ◽  
Shelia Cotten

Abstract The forecasted adoption of autonomous vehicles (AVs) will lead to major changes to the job of truck driving. These changes may be particularly challenging for drivers, as the population of truck drivers skews much older than that of other occupations. In this study we sought to understand truck drivers’ attitudes towards AVs and the longevity of their job. We conducted focus groups with truck drivers, their supervisors, and upper-level managers of trucking companies. We relate supervisors’ and managers’ experiences working with drivers through the rollout of new technologies to further understand drivers’ initial reactions to automation and how their attitudes may develop. Based on qualitative open coding our analysis uncovered two overarching themes. The first theme is the unknown. With AVs, companies expect that experience will be less important, so they can hire younger workers. In response, drivers have expressed fear of being displaced and anxiety over the uncertainty of not knowing how their jobs will be affected. The second theme is adaptability, and desire to adapt. Older drivers have expressed resistance to adapting to AVs and to their job changing. Concerningly however, managers envision the need for a driving workforce that has experience working with technology and is adaptable. Our study identifies key challenges concerning older workers’ reactions and career decisions in response to automation. Accounting for driver reactions to AVs is necessary not only to build theory and understanding on worker reactions to automation, but also for workforce planning and to support employees, particularly older workers.

Author(s):  
Sergio Martín-Prieto ◽  
Cristina Alvarez-Peregrina ◽  
Israel Thuissard-Vassallo ◽  
Carlos Catalina-Romero ◽  
Eva Calvo-Bonacho ◽  
...  

Recent studies in Spain have shown that males, younger workers, and people involved in manual jobs had the highest risk of suffering a work-related eye injury (WREI). This study aims to assess the predictors of sick leave associated with WREI and to compare them with risk factors of initial injury. A retrospective and descriptive study of WREI that causes sick leave of one or more days among workers from an insurance labor mutual company in Spain was conducted over a period from 2008 to 2018. The variables of the study were sex, age, occupation, and type of injury. A total of 9352 (18.6% of 50,265 WREI) cases and 113,395 total days of sick leave were observed, with an estimated EUR 4,994,009.59 of associated labor cost. The main predictors of sick leave related to WREI were found to be female (highest incidence; 25.9 (95% CI (24.8–27.1))), >55 years of age (highest incidence; 20.5 (95% CI (19.3–21.7))), not working in the industry (lowest incidence; 13.8 (95% CI (13.3–14.2))), and not suffering “other disorders of conjunctiva” (lowest incidence; 5.7 (95% CI (4.7–6.8))). The consequences associated with WREI are worse for female and older workers, despite the main risk of suffering WREI being observed in males and younger workers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Agota Giedrė Raišienė ◽  
Violeta Rapuano ◽  
Kristina Varkulevičiūtė

Despite the huge number of studies on telework in 2020, the influence of socio-demographic characteristics of workers on their attitudes towards telework continues to raise questions. Researchers agree on some aspects, such as younger individuals being better at absorbing new technologies. However, given that not only those who wanted to but also those who were obliged to switched to teleworking, it appears that younger people may not be as effective at working remotely as previously thought. The relevance of our study is based on the contradictory findings of research conducted during the pandemic. With this article, we contribute to the accumulation of knowledge about the change that takes place in telework. The paper aims to examine the relationship between socio-demographic indicators and the evaluation of telework. Our study confirms that the gender and age of employees are important factors in an employee’s attitude to telecommuting. Mostly, the attitudes vary in terms of gender. At least in the case of Lithuania where the research was conducted, Millennial men, unlike other generations and significantly more than Millennial women, see personal career development problems working remotely. Meanwhile, older generations do not declare greater dissatisfaction working remotely, although they do not express much favour for this approach. The results of the study indicate that in the circumstances created by the pandemic, organizations should update their human resource management strategies to achieve employee work efficiency and maintain employee motivation. The practical implication of our study in terms of open innovation is that in the future, the development of virtual working relationships will need to focus not on the technological training of older workers but on the specific provision of feedback to younger workers. In this regard, our insights may be useful for leaders in human resource management and open innovation teams.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Didier Fouarge ◽  
Raymond Montizaan

How willing are employers to hire older workers? How willing are employers to hire older workers? In this article, we use a vignette study among employers in the public sector to investigate how the role of the job applicant’s age and employers’ views on productivity and the wages of older workers affect the likelihood that older applicants are hired. We find that the likelihood of being hired significantly decreases with the age of the applicant. A job applicant who is 60 years old, has a 41% lower chance of being hired than someone who is 35 years. Employers believe that the productivity of 55to 64-year-olds is lower and labor costs are higher than that of younger workers. However, a negative opinion on the labor costs of older workers has no significant impact on older applicants’ probability of being hired. A negative opinion of the employer on the relative productivity of older workers does substantially lower the probability that an older applicant will be hired.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5778
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Dudziak ◽  
Monika Stoma ◽  
Andrzej Kuranc ◽  
Jacek Caban

New technologies reaching out for meeting the needs of an aging population in developed countries have given rise to the development and gradual implementation of the concept of an autonomous vehicle (AV) and have even made it a necessity and an important business paradigm. However, in parallel, there is a discussion about consumer preferences and the willingness to pay for new car technologies and intelligent vehicle options. The main aim of the study was to analyze the impact of selected factors on the perception of the future of autonomous cars by respondents from the area of Southeastern Poland in terms of a comparison with traditional cars, with particular emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages of this concept. The research presented in this study was conducted in 2019 among a group of 579 respondents. Data analysis made it possible to identify potential advantages and disadvantages of the concept of introducing autonomous cars. A positive result of the survey is that 68% of respondents stated that AV will be gradually introduced to our market, which confirms the high acceptance of this technology by Poles. The obtained research results may be valuable information for governmental and local authorities, but also for car manufacturers and their future users. It is an important issue in the area of shaping the strategy of actions concerning further directions of development on the automotive market.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-37
Author(s):  
Amel Kosovac ◽  
Ermin Muharemović ◽  
Alem Čolaković ◽  
Mirza Lakaca ◽  
Edvin Šimić

New technologies primarily affect the lives of all people, their habits, needs, desires, but also significantly affect the demands placed on various business sectors. Discussions on the increasingly rapid development of technical-technological solutions that can be applied in the postal sector and logistics have a long history. New technologies in all areas bring a constant change in the relationship between companies and their customers, which significantly affect the quality of work and activities. In the years to come, it will be an increasing challenge for postal operators around the world, as well as for other companies, to achieve substantive communication and understanding of their customers through the application of innovative technologies. Understanding and learning about customer issues is key to offering them services that, with their precise targeting of stakeholders, quality, visibility, efficiency, and, perhaps most importantly, flexibility, will be able to meet needs that change so quickly over time. This will be possible with new technologies and innovative solutions. The paper presents a market research on the potential use of autonomous vehicles and drones in the postal sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The research is based on a survey questionnaire on the use of drones and autonomous vehicles in the postal sector in the segment of shipment delivery.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramyar Rashed Mohassel

With the introduction of new technologies, concepts and approaches in power transmission, distribution and utilization such as Smart Grids (SG), Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMI), Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Demand Side Management (DSM), new capabilities have emerged that enable efficient use and management of power consumption. These capabilities are applicable at micro level in households and building complexes as well as at macro level for utility providers in form of resource and revenue management initiatives. On the other hand, integration of Information Technology (IT) and instrumentation has brought Building Management Systems (BMS) to our homes and has made it possible for the ordinary users to take advantage of more complex and sophisticated energy and cost management features as an integral part of their BMS. The idea of combining capabilities and advantages offered by SG, AMI, DER, DSM and BMS is the backbone of this thesis and has resulted in developing a unique, two-level optimization method for effective deployment of DSM at households and residential neighborhoods. The work consists of an optimization algorithm for households to maximize utilization of DER as the lower level of the envisioned two-level optimization technique while using a customized Game Theoretic optimization for optimizing revenue of utility providers for residential neighborhood as the upper level. This work will also introduce a power management unit, called Load Moderation Center (LMC), to host the developed optimization algorithms as an integrated part of BMS. LMC, upon successful completion, will be able to automatically plan consumption, effectively utilize available sources including grid, renewable energies and storages, and eliminate the need for residences to manually program their BMS for different market scenarios.


Author(s):  
Liguo Yu ◽  
David R. Surma ◽  
Hossein Hakimzadeh

Software development is a fast-changing area. New methods and new technologies emerge all the time. As a result, the education of software engineering is generally considered not to be keeping pace with the development of software engineering in industry. Given the limited resources in academia, it is unrealistic to purchase all the latest software tools for classroom usage. In this chapter, the authors describe how free/open-source data and free/open-source tools are used in an upper-level software engineering class at Indiana University South Bend. Depending on different learning objectives, different free/open-source tools and free/open-source data are incorporated into different team projects. The approach has been applied for two semesters, where instructor’s experiences are assembled and analyzed. The study suggests (1) incorporating both free/open-source tools and free/open-source data in a software engineering course so that students can better understand both development methods and development processes and (2) updating software engineering course regularly in order to keep up with the advance of development tools and development methods in industry.


Author(s):  
Liguo Yu ◽  
David R. Surma ◽  
Hossein Hakimzadeh

Software development is a fast-changing area. New methods and new technologies emerge all the time. As a result, the education of software engineering is generally considered not to be keeping pace with the development of software engineering in industry. Given the limited resources in academia, it is unrealistic to purchase all the latest software tools for classroom usage. In this chapter, the authors describe how free/open-source data and free/open-source tools are used in an upper-level software engineering class at Indiana University South Bend. Depending on different learning objectives, different free/open-source tools and free/open-source data are incorporated into different team projects. The approach has been applied for two semesters, where instructor's experiences are assembled and analyzed. The study suggests (1) incorporating both free/open-source tools and free/open-source data in a software engineering course so that students can better understand both development methods and development processes and (2) updating software engineering course regularly in order to keep up with the advance of development tools and development methods in industry.


2021 ◽  
pp. 311-445
Author(s):  
Scott L. Cummings

This chapter examines the monumental campaign to raise labor and environmental standards in the trucking industry at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. Building on the blue-green coalition launched in the CBA and big-box contexts—and incorporating central lessons from a decade of community–labor organizing in Los Angeles—the Campaign for Clean Trucks emerged as a fight over air quality but ultimately advanced as a local policy struggle over working conditions for roughly sixteen thousand short-haul port truck drivers. For these drivers, the central problem was their misclassification as independent contractors. Misclassification forced drivers to bear all the costs of operation—contributing to poorly maintained dirty diesel trucks causing air pollution—while depriving them of the right to organize unions to improve labor conditions. Restoring drivers to the status of employees was the mutual goal bringing together the labor and environmental movements in this campaign. It rested on a novel legal foundation: The ports, as publicly owned and operated entities, had the power to define the terms of entry for trucking companies through contracts called concession agreements. The campaign—led by LAANE, the Teamsters union, and NRDC—leveraged this contracting power to win passage of the landmark 2008 Clean Truck Program, which committed trucking companies seeking to enter the Los Angeles port to a double conversion: of dirty to clean fuel trucks (thus reducing pollution) and of independent contractor to employee drivers (thus enabling unionization). However, the program’s labor centerpiece—employee conversion—was invalidated by an industry preemption lawsuit that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. As a result, the policy gains from a blue-green campaign built on mutual interest were split apart and reallocated, resulting in environmental victory but labor setback. Why the coalition won the local policy battle but lost in court—and how the labor movement responded to this legal setback through an innovative strategy to maneuver around preemption—are the central questions this chapter explores.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S4-S4
Author(s):  
Philip Taylor

Abstract While business cases for older workers’ employment stress their value it is well-known that they participate less in training activities than younger workers. Women are at particular risk of not accessing training opportunities. Drawing on a survey of 2500 women aged over 50 we report a fine-grained analysis of the types of training women were undertaking and the factors associated with participation in training. The analysis indicates that training is infrequently undertaken in preparation for a new job and large majorities of women see no need to and are not interested in retraining. This is observed across occupational groups, but more commonly among those with low educational levels. A lack of employer support is much less commonly reported as a barrier to older women’s participating in training. The findings suggest that it is primarily at women themselves that efforts aimed at promoting human capital development need to be directed.


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