Good intentions: Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act would bring unintended consequences

The November 9, 2023, introduction of simultaneous bills in the U.S. House and Senate that would repeal the section of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 excluding truck drivers from overtime pay generated considerable noise around the trucking industry.

In the ensuing months, however, there hasn’t been much to make noise about.

Senate Bill 3273, introduced by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and called the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers (GOT) Act, was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, where it remains at the time of this writing. Its counterpart, House Bill 6359, was referred to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and has seen no movement since.

About the Senate bill, Padilla said, “I think it is pretty simple and straightforward, for the same reason that a lot of other workers and a lot of other industries get paid overtime for their time and their work. Truckers deserve the same, but for reasons I don’t understand, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 exempted many truckers from overtime protections, including overtime compensation.”

Those reasons are all too familiar to those familiar with the inner workings of the trucking industry.

“The proposed overtime bill would force additional costs on the carrier and hope the carrier finds a way to pass on those costs to the shipper,” said Dave Williams, chairman of the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) and senior vice president of equipment and government affairs for Knight-Swift Transportation. He calls the legislation, “a case of good intentions with unintended consequences.”

Predictably, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters weighed in to support the bill. General President Sean O’Brien said, “Truck drivers have been denied overtime protections for nearly 100 years. The Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act rights this wrong and would end this inexcusable abuse to hundreds of thousands of drivers across the country.”

While advocacy groups have made it clear where they stand, what isn’t clear is how such a law — if passed — would be implemented across the trucking industry.

TCA Senior Vice President of Safety and Government Affairs David Heller expressed some thoughts on the issue. Like Williams, he is concerned about unintended consequences.

“When you start looking at the unintended consequences of such a bill, the reality is going to be in today’s market,” he explained. “Does that put carriers into a situation where maybe they start monitoring those hours and keep them at 40 hours?”

A reduction of driver hours would have an adverse impact on the supply chain, Heller said. “Where does the cost come from, especially in today’s freight market?” he asked.

George O’Connor, director of communications and government affairs for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA, says it’s a matter of fairness and safety.

“In addition to basic fairness and decency, our roads are more dangerous because truckers aren’t guaranteed overtime,” he said. “The system allows shippers and receivers to excessively detain truckers at loading docks.”

Changes in drivers’ working hours, driver pay structures, and shipping and receiving procedures would be only the beginning. The dispatch process would change as carrier operations adjust schedules from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Hours-of-Service parameters to fit eight-hour days and 40-hour workweeks. Freight rates would have to be adjusted to reflect overtime pay, and contracts changed to alter transit times.

O’Connor thinks safety would be improved if shippers and receivers paid more for detaining drivers. “The delays truckers face when waiting to be loaded or unloaded is proven to increase safety risks,” he explained. “If a truck spends just 15 minutes more than usual at a facility, it increases the accident rate by 6.2%. This results in over 6,500 more crashes per year.”

But Heller, along with many in the industry, believes the unintended consequences of the GOT Act would impact safety in other ways. Limiting drivers to a 40-hour workweek would add traffic congestion to already crowded roads, increase the number of drivers looking for scarce parking spaces, and exacerbate the driver shortage, he explained.

“More trucks, more drivers, and more parking,” he said. “We already don’t have enough parking spaces.”

Unfortunately, the answers to these critical issues are not included in the GOT Act. When asked about the implementation of the legislation he introduced in the Senate, Padilla admitted, “This bill is not prescriptive onto how employers will be paying truckers.”

The recent Department of Labor (DOL) announcement of its Final Rule on classification of independent contractors further complicates the matter. In the release announcing the ruling, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said, “Misclassifying employees as independent contractors is a serious issue that deprives workers of basic rights and protections. This rule will help protect workers, especially those facing the greatest risk of exploitation, by making sure they are classified properly and that they receive the wages they’ve earned.”

While the trucking industry wrestles with implementation of the new rule, it’s clear that independent contractors now classified as employees would also be subject to a change in overtime law.

“The DOL ruling, or even AB5 in and of itself, is a threat to that business model that has been so rewarding, specifically in the truckload segment,” Heller explained. “The majority of our industry started because one person had a dream to own their own business, purchased a truck, and started hauling freight. It’s that American Dream that these misclassification-type rules threatens.”

To be clear, those on both sides of the overtime issue want to make sure drivers are compensated fairly.

“I think it’s worth noting that nobody wants to see drivers get paid more than the industry itself,” Heller said. “I think you can look at recent history and see that salaries have gone up.”

As the GOT bill continues to languish in committee, its future is questionable, especially this year, with the presidential races taking the spotlight.

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2024 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.

Cliff Abbott

Cliff Abbott is an experienced commercial vehicle driver and owner-operator who still holds a CDL in his home state of Alabama. In nearly 40 years in trucking, he’s been an instructor and trainer and has managed safety and recruiting operations for several carriers. Having never lost his love of the road, Cliff has written a book and hundreds of songs and has been writing for The Trucker for more than a decade.