Perspective: OOIDA Sides With Su on Independent Contractors
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Few issues are of greater importance to our industry than the rights of independent truckers. More than 350,000 professional drivers across the country choose to work as independent contractors because of the opportunities and flexibility independence provides, enabling them to run their own businesses as they see fit. That freedom has been an enormous source of empowerment, particularly for women, minorities and immigrants pursuing the American dream.
Unfortunately, special interests are fully invested in taking that right away. Labor unions, which are struggling with decades of declining membership, see ICs as a threat, and they’d love nothing more than to force them into collective bargaining agreements to swell their ranks and dues revenue. Trial lawyers are eager to jump on this bandwagon of greed with costly and frivolous litigation that enriches themselves at the expense of hardworking truckers. And ideologically driven politicians use the levers of government to pander to both donor groups.
Enter Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor. As California’s chief labor regulator, Su oversaw implementation of the devastating law known as AB 5, which decimated independent contracting and forced professional drivers into an unimaginable situation: Either pick up and move your life elsewhere, or risk everything you’ve worked for being taken away. In her current role, Su has demonstrated the same hostility toward ICs, refusing to listen to their perspectives and showing contempt for their choice in how to earn a living.
Spear
Rather than moderate her positions, Su has doubled down in Washington, pressing the bounds of her authority to tip the scales and remake the nation’s labor laws in California’s image. It’s the reason her nomination to serve as secretary of labor has languished in the Senate for nearly a year and a half. Nobody in our industry should support the radical agenda Su hatched in California and is trying to export nationwide.
Among those opposing Su’s nomination was the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which wrote to President Joe Biden in 2023 that it “believes the time has come to select a new nominee whose record demonstrates not only a commitment to improving working conditions for employee drivers, but also an appreciation for the benefits independent contractor status has provided owner-operators over many decades.”
It’s astonishing then to hear that OOIDA, which purports to represent the interests of independent truckers, has had a change of heart and is now endorsing Su’s disastrous IC rule — her signature policy as acting secretary. Su’s rule replaced a straightforward two-factor standard with an opaque and deliberately confusing six-factor test, creating a Frankenstein’s monster of a rule specifically designed to fuel frivolous litigation and deny self-employed individuals the freedom of choice to work as ICs. To contend it provides “more clarity,” as OOIDA does, simply defies common sense.
Going so far as to parrot her dubious claims about the regulation in comments to lawmakers, an OOIDA official gave empty assurance to independent truckers that the rule would have no effect on them if they “are in a compliant lease working for a carrier with a lease agreement.” In other words, if you like your IC plan, you can keep your IC plan. But like another infamous broken promise from Washington, this will certainly not be the case in practice.
Su
Perhaps OOIDA leadership is unaware that Su’s rule was written as a political favor to union bosses and the plaintiffs’ bar, or perhaps it genuinely believes that Su’s word can be taken at face value. Nonetheless, OOIDA’s switch of allegiance belies the fact that Su has repeatedly validated the trucking industry’s fears. OOIDA might “feel it won’t change things,” but the plaintiffs’ bar and Su’s union handlers most certainly have different plans.
OOIDA is willing to carry Su’s water, but American Trucking Associations will not. While it works to defend her crowning achievement, we are taking legal action, working with allies in Congress, and using every tool at our disposal to fight back and protect the right of independent truckers to choose their work arrangements.
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