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DETAILS: With difficulty hiring drivers getting more extreme, and with a new administration in Washington along with a new head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the largest trade group representing independent owner-operators has a full plate. Lewie Pugh joins FreightWaves Editor at Large John Kingston to discuss the landscape his organization sees from behind the wheel.
SPEAKER: William “Lewie” Pugh, executive vice president, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association
BIO: William “Lewie” Pugh has been an OOIDA member for two decades and has served on the OOIDA Board of Directors since 2004. He resides in Holden, Missouri. He has 26 years of trucking experience with 22 years as an owner-operator. Pugh quit trucking in 2017, moved to Missouri and began wor
Effective May 6, the U.S. Department of Labor has withdrawn the Independent Contractor Rule.
When the DOL initially published the rule in the Federal Register Jan. 7, 2021 during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency the agency noted that it was “revising its interpretation of independent contractor status under the Fair Labor Standards Act to promote certainty” for stakeholders, including the trucking industry, as well as in an effort to reduce litigation and “encourage innovation in the economy.”
The Jan. 7 rule sought to define the difference between an employee and an independent contractor, noting, “The ultimate inquiry is whether, as a matter of economic reality, the worker is dependent on a particular individual, business, or organization for work (and is thus an employee) or is in business for him- or herself (and is thus an independent contractor).”
DOL’s independent contractor rule withdrawn
The Department of Labor is officially withdrawing a late-Trump-era rulemaking that would have clarified the definition within the Fair Labor Standards Act. Because the rule never took effect, owner-operators will so no changes as a result of the rule s withdrawal.
DOL published the final rule on Jan. 7, shortly before the end of Trump’s presidency. Just days prior to the rule’s publication, the incoming Biden administration specifically mentioned the independent contractor rule as one of Trump’s “midnight regulations” that would be halted.
The independent contractor rule would have used five economic-reality factors to help businesses determine whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. Two of those factors – the nature and degree of the worker’s control over the work and the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss – were the two “core” factors for determining a worker’s classific