Ben Margot/AP Photo
Trucks hauling shipping containers wait to unload at the Port of Oakland, July 2019.
The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.
Last week, the Biden administration released a Trucking Action Plan, to combat what it continues to describe as a “labor shortage” in the trucking industry. Taking action to make the lives of truckers more bearable would certainly be welcome. But the word “action” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the memo’s title.
The immediate steps outlined in the memo include clearing pathways to commercial driver’s licenses, administering funds and organizational aid to driver apprenticeship programs, and conducting outreach to recruit veterans. A readout of a White House supply chain meeting on Wednesday stated that 30 trucking companies have “reached out” on the apprenticeships already.
But this all presumes that the crisis is one of labor supply, taking the industry’s framing as gospel. As Time reported last month, “There were 1.5 million people employed in trucking last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 1 percent fewer than in October 2019, and 15 percent more than a decade ago. That’s a faster growth rate than overall nonfarm employment, which is still down 2 percent from October 2019 and up only 12 percent from a decade ago.”
There isn’t a “labor shortage”—there’s a living-wage deficit. Nine out of ten drivers left the company for which they worked in the last year alone. It is clear that the sky-high turnover rates are a result of hyper-coercive pay practices in the industry, both during and after training. Too much of a driver’s time is wasted on unpaid tasks, driving down the hourly wage and worsening the isolation and drudgery. The trucking industry, after several long decades of deregulation and decay, doesn’t need more drivers. It needs strong and implacable rules on pay and worker protections.
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Yet on that front, the administration has only committed to, yet again, researching the issue with management and labor stakeholders, just as they did in July. As part of a “Driving Good Jobs” initiative, “DOL and DOT will kick off listening sessions with drivers, industry and labor leaders, and advocates to hear their perspectives, profile promising practices, and source scalable solutions to retention and job quality issues for truckers,” the memo reads. Later, it promises “FMCSA and DOL will begin an in-depth study of driver compensation, as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to examine truck driver pay, including the time drivers spend waiting to pick up or drop off freight without getting paid.” Yet another task force will investigate predatory leasing arrangements, where truckers are held hostage to their employers’ outrageous vehicle charges.
After 90 days, DOT and DOL will compile the information from the listening sessions and task forces, and create a “comprehensive action plan,” including administrative and regulatory actions.
If implemented speedily and in good faith, the combination of fact-finding reports on anti-worker activity and a massive, unflinching crackdown on predatory behavior could be a useful foundation to overhaul the trucking industry, if it had been started months ago. Any action on the core issues for truckers won’t come until sometime next March at the earliest, under this action plan.
But even if that were the present case, enacting sweeping policy reforms would require both the Departments of Transportation and Labor to stop trying to meet industry halfway, and act forcefully on pro-labor interventions. While a broad index of trucking firm stocks shows growth of nearly 30 percent in 2021, the financial gains of company workers have remained stagnant. You solve a wage and benefit gap by paying truckers more wages and offering more benefits, which inherently means management doesn’t walk away with as much. The administration can actually try to solve the trucking problem, or it can be friendly with industry management. It can’t do both.
This isn’t just an issue for truck drivers. Indeed, the Trucking Action Plan is emblematic of how the administration is tentative at best to support supply chain workers across the economy. And make no mistake: Organized labor is primed for an explosion in nearly every sector currently embroiled in the supply chain crisis. If the administration doesn’t have their backs at this crucial juncture, it will be well remembered by union workers, on whose support President Biden and his party’s electoral prospects absolutely depend.
Last month, in a new chapter following nearly a century of Hoffa dynasty control, the Teamsters elected a reformist leadership slate with a mandate for aggressive organizing, not only to increase union density, but also to fend off existential threats to worker empowerment, like Amazon’s consolidation of warehousing, shipping, and delivery.
Meanwhile, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which has tangled with past administrations through its vast power to effectively shut down the entire West Coast port system, will renegotiate its contract next year. The union will have remarkable leverage to bargain, given the skyrocketing profits among ocean shippers, and the dire need for longshoremen to work 24/7 to alleviate port congestion. To some extent, the administration’s role in those upcoming negotiations is already being set, and how federal agencies will choose to activate regulatory powers in America’s trade gateways will be watched closer than ever before.
In a singular example of the government’s capacity to reach down and swat away the invisible hand of the free market, pop-up container yards implemented by a federal-local partnership in the Port of Savannah reduced wait times for drayage truckers, simultaneously reducing supply chain blockage and worker maltreatment in one fell swoop.
The reduction in supply chain issues and worker grievances has to be implemented now to see returns down the line. As The New York Times reported this week, truckers are struggling to make do during a holiday season beset with a Christmas delivery crunch and the ongoing pandemic. Without aggressive action by the administration, truckers may find even more reason to feel alone. As one trucker told the Times, “You see all your Facebook friends, and they are posting all these beautifully laid out dinners and pictures of all their family gathered around. You are sitting in your truck by yourself.”
