FedEx Ground Hit with Driver Lawsuit in Mass.

More than 30 current and former FedEx Ground drivers brought a class-action lawsuit against the company last week in a federal court in Massachusetts, alleging that they were misclassified as independent contractors.

Plaintiffs alleged in court papers that they were denied health and pension benefits, among others, because of FedEx Ground’s “unlawful misclassification of drivers as independent contractors instead of employees.”

FedEx maintains that its drivers are properly classified as independent contractors.

“This attorney has filed complaints with virtually identical allegations multiple times,” FedEx Ground spokesman Maury Lane told Transport Topics Thursday. “Only the names have been changed.”

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, is the latest brought against FedEx Ground by drivers who say the company treated them as employees and not as contractors. Similar litigation is still pending in other districts.

FedEx Ground is a unit of FedEx Corp., ranked No. 2 on the Transport Topics 100 listing of U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.