Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/655281
TRUCKING TOPICS 14 // COMPANY DRIVER // APRIL 2016 In all the bile and buzz around the so- called (and failed) "Denham amendment" to the highway bill, recently reintroduced as part of the House version of the Federal Aviation Administration's reauthorization bill, a lot of the commentary has assumed that allowing states to enforce wage and hour laws on the books (or some unforeseen state- to-state regulation of driver hours/pay) in transportation is a good thing. Those making that assumption view such enforcement as to an extent potentially chipping away at driver- compensation systems as they exist today and placing more value on drivers' time in the long run. I won't go all the way back through the origins of what's been going on in this area (for that you can read both this story and this story). The measure in the FAA reauthorization is more or less the same as it was in the highway bill, the first addition focused on state-mandated hours regs that conflict with federal rules. The second part, however, is what most commentators opposed to it have a problem with. That part prohibits individual states from regulating driver pay beyond the basic federal minimum wage laws, prohibiting laws that "require (my emphasis) a motor carrier that compensates employees on a piece-rate basis" (such as per-mile or percentage) to further compensate those employees in another way as long as compensation all told is at least equal to the state's minimum wage for the hours worked. I.E., the provision in the House's FAA reauthorization bill, like its failed predecessor in the highway bill, has nothing whatsoever to do with sticking requirements or prohibitions into private agreements between employers and employees. For instance, it would not prevent carriers from paying on-duty not- driving time like detention at an hourly rate. Rather, it would prohibit individual states from regulating pay beyond requiring that carriers at least pay drivers rates equal to or greater than the state's minimum wage for hours worked. Given the protection from suit extended by the measure to "piece-rate" pay systems, some watchers have suggested the measure represents a slippery slope to the total elimination of detention pay and other common hourly accessorial pay for various on-duty not-driving time. I think there's some validity there, though it might be a bit of a stretch. Carriers, for instance, aren't required by interpretations in most jurisdictions to offer detention pay today, yet many obviously do. What I do see as a key issue is whether we want federal rules to govern transportation from a wage and hour perspective (if at all), or if a patchwork of state-to-state rules, such as the state of California's meal and rest breaks rules that spawned the FAA reauthorization and highway bill measures, are to be trucking's future. Some readers walk the no-government- interference line: As one commenter pointed out, responding to the suggestion that the aforementioned highway-bill amendment would in effect do away with detention pay, "The amendment only applies to what states are allowed to regulate regarding trucking wages, not what a private company is allowed to pay. Nothing in the amendment appears to prohibit a company from paying a driver for anything that he does on the truck. Frankly, I don't believe any government should have any say whatsoever in the private arrangements that an individual makes with his employer regarding wages."