Posts tagged truckers
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien eviscerates the Democratic Party: ‘They have f**** us over for the last 40 years’
October 8, 2024 // 'I'm a Democrat but they have f***** us over for the last 40 years and for once we're standing up as a union saying what the f*** have you done for us?' O'Brien said in scathing remarks. 'I'm getting attacked from the left you know and since I've been in office over two and a half years we've given the Democratic machine $15.7 million. 'We've given Republicans about $340,000 truth be told, so it's like you know people say the Democratic party is the party of working people, but they're actually bought and paid for by big tech,' O'Brien explained.
Teamsters without endorsement as members back Trump over Harris
September 19, 2024 // Rank-and-file members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters back former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, according to a new poll, though the union says it will not back a candidate this election cycle. The Teamsters union, which represents truckers and UPS drivers, released internal polling of its membership Wednesday, finding that 58% of members support Trump compared to 31% who back Harris.
Independent contractor classification still murky under new DOL rule
July 8, 2024 // Bill Webb, executive director for the Coalition for Independent Truckers, is skeptical. “To me, it’s just another one of those deaths by 1000 cuts for the independent contractor model,” he said. He believes this year’s November election will be crucial in retaining the current model. “(The DOL rule) does clearly change from a true AB5 model to something a little muddier,
Gig Workers Need Flexibility, Not More Rules | Opinion
March 20, 2024 // Su and the Biden administration are missing one important thing, however: most contract workers don't want those protections. Or rather, they consider the reward of the contract work and compensation to be greater than the risk of not having the traditional protections a full-time employee might enjoy. Many contract workers also work full-time jobs that offer said protections. The gig economy has exploded in the last two decades. Before the pandemic, it was estimated to employ 36 percent of American workers, or about 57.2 million people. Statistics from last year suggest there are over 73 million freelancers in the U.S.
Opinion: Biden adds to his ‘Bidenomics’ flop: This new rule throws wrench in popular gig economy.
January 22, 2024 // Biden promised to be the “most pro-union president you’ve ever seen,” so he needs to reward all those campaign donations. And Biden’s doing it regardless of the impact on the economy. Independent contractors cannot be unionized, so the more companies lean on these workers, the less ability unions have to organize. It’s really that simple. The Biden administration is trying to sell its new rule as a way to protect workers and make it easier for them to qualify for benefits such as overtime pay and paid time off.
Commentary: Biden’s Independent-Contracting Rule Destroys Worker Independence
January 16, 2024 // A recent regulatory change by the Biden administration is so poorly designed, there’s no telling exactly how many workers will be hurt.
Behind the last-ditch effort to save a trucking company that owes $700M to taxpayers
December 1, 2023 // Estes Express earlier this fall offered $1.53 billion "stalking horse" bid for Nashville-based Yellow's shipment centers. That would easily be enough to repay around $500 million in debt held by senior lender Citadel — which purchased the notes from Apollo, post bankruptcy — plus other creditors and the CARES Act loan. Then we got a wrinkle, just ahead of the bankruptcy auction kicking off this past Tuesday. It was a bid led by the owner of auto trucking company Jack Cooper to restart Nashville-based Yellow, not just scoop up logistics properties or other assets. This new proposal, as reported by the NY Times, would repay private creditors immediately, but postpone the Treasury loan repayment to 2026 from 2024. It's this second deal that's being supported, at least in principle, by a chorus of U.S. senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Rep. French Hill
The FTC’s Indefensible Position on Collective Bargaining
April 19, 2023 // In remarks last week at the University of Utah School of Law, FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya argued that independent contractors should be allowed to bargain collectively. He acknowledged that courts have always treated collective bargaining by contractors as illegal under federal antitrust law. But he claimed that these courts have made a mistake: in fact, Congress never meant to stop small contractors, like truckers or plumbers, from forming a union and bargaining together. Bedoya’s interpretation would upset a century of careful balancing between antitrust and labor policy. It would also expose the contractors themselves to serious risks of abuse. And it would undermine well-established rules against collusion, price fixing, and other restraints on trade. To see why Bedoya is so wrong, you have to understand labor law and antitrust law’s tangled history. Let’s start with section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Adopted in 1890, section 1 banned all contracts and conspiracies in restraint of trade. It did not, however, define trade restraints. Instead, it incorporated common-law standards. Under the common law, unions were treated no differently from any other combination of buyers or sellers. If they conspired to fix labor prices, they violated the law. And collective bargaining could be seen as one form of price fixing. As a result, the law sometimes treated unions as, essentially, labor cartels.
Bill To Require Driverless Trucks To Have A Driver in the Vehicle is Backed by Labor Unions
April 18, 2023 // A bill to require driverless trucks to have a driver in the vehicle moved closer to a crucial Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee this week, but it wasn’t just a safety bill – labor unions are backing the bill in anticipation of a close vote. Assembly Bill 316, authored by Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) would prohibit the operation of an autonomous vehicle with a gross vehicle weight of 10,000 pounds or more on public roads for testing purposes, transporting goods, or transporting passengers without a human safety operator physically present in the autonomous vehicle at the time of operation. While AB 316 was authored by Assemblywoman Aguiar-Curry, it was introduced with a bipartisan group of legislators, including Assemblymen Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) and Ash Kalra (D-San Jose). While a few Republicans have been in favor of the bill as a way to keep jobs in rural areas, many Democrats have been in favor of the bill due to it protecting thousands of union trucking jobs and alleged safety benefits. “You don’t create a safer environment if you have a 10,000-pound vehicle out there without a human safety net,” noted California Labor Federation leader and former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who previously authored the independent contractor reclassification law AB 5, which truckers themselves had adamantly opposed.
Biden’s regulatory machine wants to stifle the freedom of the American worker
October 31, 2022 // Frankly, workers are not helpless. They are perfectly capable of choosing their own lifestyles and can evaluate their labor choices along with the compensation and benefits each provides. We currently have an economy in which, for the entirety of 2022, the number of job openings has nearly outnumbered unemployed workers 2-1. If these “gigs” were so horrible, these people would seek other employment. Moreover, the Biden administration’s mandated reclassification would significantly increase the cost of doing business for both small businesses and large companies such as Uber, Doordash, and others that provide unique economic opportunities for gig workers. This heavy-handed regulatory approach will discourage entrepreneurial innovation and result in added costs that will be passed along to the consumer.