In The News
ATA calls on Congress to make sure truckers stay under uniform, federal work rules
ARLINGTON, Va. — The American Trucking Associations late Thursday called on Congress to reject what the lobbying group says are efforts by organized labor and trial attorneys to impose a patchwork of state scheduling rules on the nation's professional truck drivers.
Buried in the fine print of an aviation bill introduced in the House in January is a provision that would prevent states from requiring trucking companies to schedule what were termed "more generous" rest breaks for their drivers than the federal government's minimum standard.
Laws in 22 states require longer or more frequent rest or meal breaks for workers than the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's standard for truckers of a minimum half-hour break eight hours after reporting for duty, among them, California.
Trucking stakeholders challenged the state laws in court and lost. The industry lost again in December when a provision it backed to pre-empt the state laws in favor of the federal standard was taken out of a massive transportation bill at the insistence of Senate negotiators.
The provision was quietly revived in a bill introduced by Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration.
Safety groups oppose the provision, which they say will be used by companies to pressure drivers to continue behind the wheel when they are tired or hungry.
The Truckload Carriers Association and the American Trucking Associations support the provision.
"We want one rule governing rest and meal breaks and only one," said Dave Heller, TCA's director of safety and policy.
"A single set of consistent and fair regulations is essential to the trucking industry," said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves in a prepared news release. "Language currently being discussed by Congressional leaders would ensure that drivers operate under a consistent set of break rules, whether that driver is delivering a trailer full of water to Flint, Michigan, or picking up a load of avocados in Temecula, California. That's what Congress sought to establish with a 1994 law, and recent interpretations of that law by the courts are threatening that consistency."
"Language in the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 made it clear states are not permitted to institute rules governing the trucking industry because Congress wanted the industry to operate under a single, uniform system from coast-to-coast rather than a confusing and inefficient patchwork of state laws. However, some states — notably California — a handful of courts, and aggressive plaintiffs' attorneys are refusing to faithfully uphold that goal of one country, one set of rules," ATA stated in its release.
"If lawmakers do not address this overreach by the states and the courts, they will destroy the unified national rules that Congress intended trucking to operate under," Graves said. "And moreover, if opponents of this provision succeed in blocking this common sense fix, it only will make an already difficult job unnecessarily complex."
ATA also chided opponents of the measure for being deceptive in their characterization of the provision's impacts.
"Federal regulators have said unequivocally that California's break requirements are not safety rules, as critics have claimed," said Richard Pianka, ATA's acting general counsel. "In addition, contrary to the claims of the special interests lobbying against this provision, it will not allow carriers not to pay drivers for all their time. In fact, the legislation expressly requires that drivers being paid by the mile or load receive as much or more than they'd be entitled to if they were paid by the hour."
"Since the 1930s, the federal government has maintained a uniform national set of work and rest rules for the trucking industry that has been imperiled by recent court actions. ATA calls upon Congress to safeguard these important regulations," the release concluded.
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