Big trucking wants to kill overtime pay for truckers

July 18, 2022

John Bendel

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Guess who opposes overtime pay for drivers, something that could attract more drivers to the industry?

The same people who cry about a driver shortage – big truckload carriers and their big club, the American Trucking Associations – that’s who.

The Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act, introduced in the House of Representatives in April, would right a wrong that has existed since 1938. The measure would simply delete the section of the Fair Labor Standards Act titled “Exemptions.” The section names all the workers excluded from the act, including truck drivers.

Muddled facts and half-truths

The ATA has begun attacking it – very quietly. It’s a low-key, almost stealth effort so far. No media interviews, not even a news release. It’s as if they don’t want the media or the general public to know. I guess the fewer people who know truck drivers do not get overtime pay the better. Sadly, that’s few people, indeed.

The radio-silent, anti-overtime pay campaign consists of ATA lobbyists passing out a two-page flyer in congressional offices. It’s headlined “H.R.7571, the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act Myth vs. Fact.”

Here’s an example, one of seven:

MYTH: The change is needed to ensure that truckers are paid a fair wage.
FACT: Truck drivers make good salaries, with a mean salary of $58,000 per year according to a May 2020 ATA industry survey. Recent BLS data on weekly earnings in the long-haul trucking sector shows that driver wages are now rising at five times their historical average as fleets compete for drivers, amounting to over $60,000 annually.

 

Five times their historical average? Maybe if recorded history began three years ago. In terms of buying power, driver pay is half what it was 40 years ago. Sure, $60,000 sounds good to a lot of people earning minimum wage, but not for a worker away from home for weeks at a time, on-call and responsible for a truck and a load every second of that time – whether officially on-duty or not. Piloting 40 tons of truck down the highway, the average truckload driver bears a heavier and more immediate responsibility than most executives who make multiples of $60,000. Besides, that’s a mean figure. Sure, some drivers make more. They earn it. But many earn less, sometimes far less.

Family-sustaining wages

Here’s an ATA “fact” that sent me to the medicine cabinet for more Tums:

“FACT: Most truck drivers are paid by the mile or load and earn a family-sustaining wage with the built-in flexibility to effectively make their own decisions subject only to safety requirements.”

 

The stomach acid really flows when I read the words “family-sustaining wage.” That implies the families of truckload drivers can live on those mileage earnings alone. But a family of how many? Living where? Eating how? Wearing what?

Most truckers’ households require two or more incomes. Today, most all working families need more than one income. “Family sustaining wage” is a misleading phrase, a fuzzy misrepresentation of reality.

And what the hell is the “built-in flexibility to effectively make their own decisions”? What decisions are they? What to have for lunch? Where is the flexibility in forced dispatch, continuous real-time tracking, and driver-facing cameras? Owner-operators may have a bit of latitude, but elsewhere in this odious myth-fact flyer ATA correctly points out that FLSA would not apply to owner-operators. The truth is FLSA would have no bearing whatever on a company driver’s options – what few there are.

In another “fact,” the ATA reruns its misbegotten defense of driver churn – that it’s somehow great and all-American. This time, they wrap the idea up tightly and slap on a flashy label, but it still smells like something the dog left behind the couch. Driver turnover is a national disgrace. The churn part of it is just plain sad.

Lower pay and cheap freight

There is too much in this awkward propaganda piece to deal with in this space, but let me address just one more ulcer-inducing statement:

“Even employee drivers may find this change to their detriment, if the cost for their labor due to overtime wages (even if the driver has sufficient DOT-regulated hours of service available) mean that their employer must turn down freight because the offered rates would be unprofitable.”

 

Now there’s a gnarly piece of logic. Coverage under the FLSA would apply to all carriers and all company drivers. No individual carrier should have to lose business because they pay overtime. Everyone will have to pay overtime. Companies can pay different hourly rates, just as they now charge different mileage rates. The FLSA would apply across the board. That’s the way it is in manufacturing, construction and all the other industries not exempted from the FLSA. It’s reasonable, it’s fair, and it has worked to everyone’s benefit since 1938.

The ATA seems to be suggesting that drivers should accept lower pay so the boss can haul cheap freight.

While FLSA would not cure all of truckload’s problems, it would be a step in the right direction – toward fairness. And overtime pay could help attract and retain drivers. It certainly won’t repel them.

Ducking costs of delays

So why are truckload carriers opposed to overtime pay?

Because they’d have to change some things. Truckload has long had the luxury of quoting mileage rates to shippers with little worry about the costs of unpredictable delays. Drivers pay those costs. They pay in lost driving time and, maybe more importantly, lost time with their families. The FLSA would force the truckload industry to deal seriously with variables in their rates. They could no long pass those variable costs onto drivers.

Big trucking should also reconsider its haphazardly conceived, under-the-radar stand on overtime pay. Their lobbyists should go back through the House and Senate office buildings and ask for their flyers back. LL