Representative Kevin Kiley (R-California) and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) introduced Wednesday a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that seeks to overturn the Department of Labor’s (DOL) final worker classification rule that threatens to upend trucking's use of independent owner operators when it takes effect Monday. A CRA is a tool Congress can use to examine and overturn federal agency rules and must passed by both chambers and signed by the president. If vetoed by the president, it has to pass by two-thirds of the members of each house.
Kiley's resolution has 55 co-sponsors.
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“Gavin Newsom and Julie Su’s AB 5 severely restricted independent contracting in California, destroying thousands of livelihoods and harming California’s economy," Kiley said. "As Acting Secretary of Labor, Su and the Biden Administration have announced a new Department of Labor rule, modeled after the same job-killing AB 5 that will cost millions of independent professionals across the country their livelihoods while restricting the freedom of many millions more to have flexible work arrangements. Our legislation under the Congressional Review Act nullifies this terrible regulation and protects independent contractors."
Although it's been legally entangled on-again and off-again since passing in 2019, AB 5 generally called into question trucking's legal use of contracted/non-employee carriers and sought to determine if independent contractors in California are employees or indeed independent for purposes of its labor code.
The state rule served as a model of sorts for the new federal guidelines set to go into effect March 11, and Cassidy said the new DOL rule "makes it easier to forcibly and coercively unionize workers," adding the Biden administration’s priority should not be "to increase individual freedom and opportunity."
In a statement provided to CCJ Wednesday​​​​, Truckload Carriers Association Senior Vice President of Safety and Government Affairs David Heller called independent contractors "an integral part of the trucking industry, representing a decades-old business model that has served the American economy and general public exceptionally well." He added that TCA applauds the CRA resolution filed by Rep. Kiley and Sen. Cassidy "as an effort to support our industry against unwanted threats that oppose a widely used practice by our industry, which the recent DOL rule represents ... If left unchallenged, the DOL rule would jeopardize the freedoms of those businesspeople who have chosen to become entrepreneurs and stand against the American dream that this country was founded upon."
