Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, recently lent his support to a bill that would guarantee overtime pay to employee truck drivers who work more than 40 hours in a week.
On Dec. 4, he became the third co-sponsor of the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act. HR6359 would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to require that company drivers receive overtime compensation when they exceed the standard 40-hour work week.
Nehls told Land Line Now in a recent interview that he has been unable to find a logical reason for excluding truck drivers from this benefit.
“In any other industry if you’re working over 40 hours – whether it’s law enforcement or public service or whatever – you’re eligible to receive overtime,” Nehls said. “Why would that not apply to truckers as well? Somebody explain to me, and I haven’t found one yet – a logical reason or explanation as to why we wouldn’t have overtime for our nation’s truckers. It makes no sense.”
To Nehls’ point, the original motivation for the exemption in 1938 did not play out as intended. The thought was that excluding truck drivers from overtime pay would discourage them from working excessive hours. However, the lack of overtime and a pay-by-the-mile system has created the opposite effect. Truckers often have to work 70 hours in a week to receive pay comparable to other blue-collar professions.
GOT Truckers Act
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., introduced the House version of the bill in November 2023.
“Truckers are an essential component of our nation’s supply chain, and compensating them appropriately is the least we can do to support them,” Van Drew said. “Let’s be fair. Let’s be decent to the hard-working men and women who do this job.”
The bipartisan bill is up to four co-sponsors.
A Senate version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., in November 2023. It has five co-sponsors.
Motivation for change?
During President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign, he promoted a plan to not tax workers on their overtime wages because “the people who work overtime are among the hardest working citizens in our country.”
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, of course, believes truck drivers should be included among that group.
To do so, however, the GOT Truckers Act must be passed into law so that all employee truckers become eligible for overtime.
“We know that for too long, too many people throughout the supply chain have placed little or no value on a driver’s time,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in 2022. “This is partly because of the FLSA overtime exemption.” LL
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