Editorial: Section 611 Makes Good Sense

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is debating aviation policy in the form of the Aviation Innovation, Reform and Reauthorization Act, or AIRR Act, and a sliver of the 273-page bill concerns trucking.

Way back in Title VI, the miscellaneous grouping, there’s some wording that would strengthen the congressional prohibition against state and local governments regulating interstate trucking companies on pricing, routes and services, which has been the case since 1994 and the passage of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, or F4A.

We think this prohibition is a good idea and support what has been called Section 611.

According to F4A, states may regulate trucking on size and weight and certain aspects of safety, insurance and hazardous materials. They also can regulate intrastate movements of household goods and towing — and nothing in 611 will change any of that.

The point of 611, which comes from Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), is two-fold. Truck drivers involved in interstate commerce should have their time governed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours-of-service regulation, and the way they get paid should meet or exceed federal or state minimum wage laws.

The appeal of this is intuitively obvious and radically sensible: FMCSA regulates driver hours, as it long has, and pay should meet or beat minimum wage standards.

This is, in fact, so obvious that it demands the question, why put this into law in the first place?

California is the short answer, as the nation’s most populous state has tried to fold a meal-break provision on top of HOS — which already has a 30-minute break section among it’s many other requirements. The Golden State also wants a secondary pay provision slathered on top of wages that already beat the minimum standards.

Trucking is not using Section 611 as a stalking horse to alter HOS or minimum wage standards. The industry just wants to see the status quo maintained on a level, federal basis.

As trucks roll freely across state lines, often several in a day, it becomes nightmarishly difficult to comply with 49 different standards. (F4A does not apply in Hawaii.)

Trucking is not making a special pleading to be treated better or easier than any other group of employers. The industry’s firms just want a single, federal rule for hours applied by FMCSA and to meet — and often beat — existing minimum wage standards.

Representatives and senators should support 611.