NRF Rebukes New York/Newark Mayors For Plan to Ban Owner-Operators

National and state associations representing importers, exporters, logistics companies and logistics service providers sent a letter on Nov. 4 to the mayors of New York City and Newark, N.J., criticizing their support for a union campaign to ban truck driver owner-operators.

"We fully support efforts by the ports, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to improve their air quality. However, there is absolutely no need for a change to longstanding federal law to achieve this goal, nor any justification on outlawing independent owner-operator trucking firms from serving our nation's ports," said the letter.

The Port of Los Angeles sought to ban owner-operators and require all truck drivers entering the port to be trucking company employees. The Teamsters asked the city's mayor to include that requirement to make it easier to unionize port truck drivers, but a U.S. District Court of Appeals panel ruled unanimously that such a ban is illegal. The Teamsters are now pressuring Congress to change the federal law that makes the ban illegal.

"In 2007, the Port of Los Angeles' Clean Truck Program included a provision that would have banned any harbor trucking company from using independent owner-operator drivers, in favor of employee drivers and some other onerous economic-based regulations. These restrictions, advocated by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, are designed to eliminate competition from small independent businesses in favor of companies that the Teamsters believe could be more easily organized," the letter said.

"The Port of Los Angeles, the NRDC, and the Teamsters seek to expand the exceptions to federal preemption legislatively in order to accomplish by statute an objective that the Courts found to be currently unlawful. In fact, the Court of Appeals recognized that federal preemption of interstate trucking services was designed to prevent a patchwork of burdensome state and local trucking rules as would be created by the Port of Los Angeles' concession plan," the letter said. "We hope that you will reconsider your position on this issue. It is time for us to work together in the common objective of improving air quality at our nation's ports, and to stop this poorly disguised effort to put law-abiding independent owner operators of clean trucks out of business."