Driving Mr. Gambler

Here's the situation: Company A agrees to deliver goods to Company B. It's a profitable arrangement for both. Company A hires Driver D to transport the goods from Location A to Location B.

So far, so good, right?

Is it ethical for Company A to minimize payments to Driver D in order to maximize the company's own profits? And is it ethical for Company B to pretend that it has no stake in this transaction?

This sounds like one of those fifth-grade math "word problems" that I hated, so let's move from the theoretical to the real:

Company A = tour bus companies and Company B = casinos. The goods to be delivered are gamblers, and Driver D are the drivers hired by the tour bus companies.

New York area newspapers and radio and television stations have carried many stories in the past few days about two area tour buses, in which passengers were being transported to Connecticut and New Jersey casinos, and which were involved in serious, even horrific, accidents. (Click here for New York Times coverage of the first accident.)

Questions have been raised about the drivers (were they impaired? fatigued? insufficiently supervised?), about the tour bus companies (was there sufficient oversight? regulation?), and more.

Today's Times has a particularly interesting piece, by Michael Grynbaum and Noah Rosenburg, that shed light on one corner of the overall story.

Yes, driver fatigue is a possible element, those interviewed say. The reporters note: "Federal guidelines limit passenger-bus drivers to 10 hours behind the wheel, within a 15-hour work day, and bus carriers face a fine if violations are discovered. But the hours, recorded in a handwritten logbook, are easily falsified, and even outstanding violations are often ignored: World Wide Travel, the operator whose bus crashed in the Bronx, had been cited several times by regulators for problems with its logs."

But the story is about more than federal regulations. It's about a space, "small, drab and windowless", provided at the Uncasville casino for bus drivers waiting for their passengers. Many of the buses, you see, operate for "overnight gamblers": they leave New York (or other cities) at night and head for the nearest casinos; returns are only a few hours later, after midnight. They're cheap, too -- essentially free, as tickets often come with vouchers for food and gambling.

For drivers, the rewards are few (unless they happen to be lucky at the tables): the pay is low and the hours are long. The fact that Mohegan Sun provides a lounge for them is a positive -- most casinos don't, and drivers who want to nap as they wait for their return trip passengers must do so in their buses, parked out in the bus lots, often several miles from the casino itself.

One driver quoted by the Times expressed his gratitude for the Mohegan Sun lounge, saying of his bus, "in the wintertime, it's too cold, and in the summertime, it's too hot.... It gets over 100 inside the bus in the summer. You cannot stay up there."

I'm shocked -- but sadly, not really surprised -- that such a lounge, tacky and "sparsely furnished with snack machines and worn khaki chairs" as it is, isn't a standard offering at all casinos. After all, the drivers are how Company A (the tour bus companies) get their goods (gamblers) to Company B (the casinos). It's in both companies' best interest to have drivers rested and ready to drive.

Not to mention, it's the right thing to do.