26 Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch State of the Unions What a resurgence of organized labor means for trucking By Prasad Sharma, Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary, P.C. A BRIEF TOUR of headlines over the past year suggests relations between companies and their workers are tumultuous. From the threat of a strike by UPS workers and West Coast port workers to actual strikes by Hollywood writers, actors, and auto workers at the Big Three, organized labor has grabbed the spotlight. Organized labor has been aided by a White House led by the self-proclaimed “most pro-union President ever.” At the same time, only 10.1% of wage and salary workers were union members in 2022 compared to 20.1% in 1983, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking the data. In trucking, the decline in union membership is even more precipitous. When first negotiated in 1964, the Teamsters-negotiated National Master Freight Agreement covered 450,000 truckers across 16,000 companies. With Yellow’s recent closure, there are now less than 40,000 Teamsters workers covered. What does organized labor’s reinvigorated approach mean for the trucking industry, which is still in the grips of a seemingly endemic driver shortage? While the future remains largely unknowable, this article hopes to provide some observations to inform and prepare trucking companies for choppy waters ahead.1 Trends in wealth disparity may help explain why organized labor feels it has the wind at its back. A September 2022 analysis of trends in the distribution of family wealth by the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that between 2010 and 2019, the total family wealth held by the bottom 50% increased from $1.4 trillion to $2.3 trillion (just under $1 trillion). By comparison, the total family wealth held by the top 10% increased from $56.7 trillion to $82.4 trillion (over $25 trillion). While the wealth gap has been increasing, so has public support for unions. Some findings from a recent survey by Gallup on Americans’ approval of labor unions are telling. A record-high 61% of respondents said unions help rather than hurt the U.S. economy. In 2009, just 39% of respondents felt that way. Forty-three percent of respondents favored unions having more influence than they do today. By comparison, only 25% shared that sentiment in 2009. Wealth disparity may also explain the surge in economic populism—once almost exclusively the realm of Democrats but increasingly explored by Republicans. The same Gallup poll referred to above found that among Republican respondents, 47% approved of labor unions compared to just 29% of Republican respondents in 2009. Perhaps it is no coincidence that we are seeing a smattering of Republican legislators support measures like a ban on non-competes and renegotiating trade agreements to provide more worker protections, or that we recently saw workers at a Volkswagen plant in solidly red Tennessee vote to unionize. Perceived changes in public perception combined with a pro-labor Executive branch makes for a potent elixir that promises to pose challenges to trucking companies’ relationship with their workforce in the near-term. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), with a 3-1 Democrat majority, has been zealously acting to make unionization easier, the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) finalized a regulation that will make it more difficult that its predecessor regulation to classify owneroperators as independent contractors, and even the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is pursuing organized labor’s agenda in unprecedented ways. And that’s just at the federal level. Labor continues to push for draconian California AB 5-like legislation intended to all but eliminate the independent contractor model. All this, despite median truckload driver wages increasing as a market response to the driver shortage by 18% from 2019 to 2021, and from $46,084 in 2013 to $69,687 in 2021. As mentioned, the NLRB has been busy of late. Notably, the NLRB decided a case, The Atlanta Opera, overruling an earlier 2019 decision setting forth the test for determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor
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