Hallelujah!
There it is. Number 40 of 62 policy recommendations in a document of more than 100 pages: “Urge Congress to eliminate the Fair Labor Standards Act motor carrier exemption.”
It’s about time. The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938 – 84 years ago. For all that time, commercial and private carrier drivers, dock workers and mechanics have not been covered by the law that requires other employers to pay workers time-and-a-half for more than 40 hours. It wasn’t a big deal when most drivers earned overtime because of union contracts. But it became a big deal with the end of economic regulation and spread of mileage pay in the burgeoning truckload sector.
The recommendation to end the exemption appears in a U.S. Department of Transportation document titled “Supply Chain Assessment of the Transportation Industrial Base: Freight and Logistics.” The study was ordered by the Biden administration in 2021 in response to the ongoing logistics logjam. The FLSA may just be the tiniest of the study’s concerns, but it matters.
The trucking exemption to the FLSA is mean and disrespectful. It was unconscionable in 1938 and is even more so now. The truckload industry has used it for decades to shift the cost of delays onto drivers. It’s hard to believe it has taken this long for anyone in national government to recommend we get rid of it.
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