Sen. Barbara Boxer Still Railing Against Trucking Provisions on Meal and Rest Breaks
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is maintaining her opposition to a key trucking provision.
In a recent letter to the leaders of the Senate funding committee, she shoots down the provisions intention and criticizes any effort to advance it. The provision would prevent states from enacting laws requiring companies to schedule meal and rest breaks for drivers or to pay drivers by the hour. Senate appropriators intend to take up a fiscal 2017 transportation funding bill, and Boxer is worried lawmakers will stick the trucking provision in the legislation.
“This terrible anti-safety provision is a poison pill,” Boxer, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works panel, wrote April 14. “I urge that it not be included in this legislation.”
Earlier this year, House Republicans sought to advance an aviation reform bill with the trucking provision. American Trucking Associations has backed the provision.
The meal-break provision is aimed largely at blocking a California meal-break law, signed in 2011, that requires employers to provide a “duty-free” 30-minute meal break for employees who work more than five hours a day and a second “duty-free” 30-minute meal break for those who work more than 10 hours a day. Meal and rest break laws have been in place in California and other states.
