Special Report: OOIDA brief details driver harassment by ATA member companies

Maria

Diet Coke
Staff member
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 – A broader picture of driver harassment by motor carriers through electronic on-board recorders was detailed in a recent Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association court filing with the U.S. District Court for the 7th Circuit.

The most recent filing comes in a case filed by OOIDA in late January seeking a cease-and-desist order on the current policies and practices by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to encourage the use of electronic on-board recorders.

Nearly five months after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit vacated the electronic on-board recorder regulation, the agency continued allowing use of the devices. That encouragement and promotion amounts to “blatant disregard” for the court’s Aug. 26, 2011, decision, according to OOIDA’s court filing.

Judge Diane P. Wood wrote the decision for the 7th Circuit that vacated the EOBR regulation because the agency failed to address driver harassment in the rulemaking process. The harassment argument was one of three arguments presented by OOIDA – and the only one needed for the court to toss the regulation.

“Following this court’s decision, respondent FMCSA embarked on a policy of encouraging motor carriers to require drivers to use electronic monitoring devices to record their hours-of-service without taking any steps to ensure that the devices are not used to harass drivers,” OOIDA’s cease and desist motion states.

The agency persisted with this policy even following an exchange of letters between OOIDA and the agency following the court’s ruling.

In response to OOIDA’s motion for a cease and desist, the agency contends that another regulation governing automatic on-board recording devices – or AOBRDs – allows the agency to continue permitting the use of electronic on-board recorders for monitoring hours-of-service compliance.

The American Trucking Associations has now petitioned the court asking to be granted intervenor status in support of FMCSA. The court has not yet responded to ATA’s petition.

However, the ATA proceeded in filing an amicus brief in support of FMCSA.

On March 2, OOIDA petitioned for permission to respond to the ATA and included the OOIDA response brief.

In the response OOIDA filed, the Association outlined a pattern of harassment by ATA member motor carriers revealed in a survey conducted by OOIDA’s Foundation. OOIDA’s response also counters ATA’s assertion that the AOBRD regulation permits the use of electronic on-board recorders.

“ATA’s amicus brief does not address the primary basis for petitioners’ pending motion – the authority of this court to enforce its own orders or mandates,” OOIDA’s response states.

The Association states in its response that ATA is “no stranger to the problems of driver harassment.”

full story
 
The next paragraph.......



“The OOIDA Foundation conducted a survey to gather data on the experience of drivers with motor carrier harassment. C.R. England, whose chief executive officer currently serves as President of ATA, and other companies whose executives currently serve on ATA’s board of directors, including Swift, J.B. Hunt, Knight, Prime and Conway, were identified prominently by drivers as among several hundred motor carriers who currently use electronic monitoring devices to harass drivers,” OOIDA’s response states.

Results of the survey revealed that the “experience of the drivers under lease to members of ATA’s board of directors was worse than that of all drivers taken as a whole.”

The survey also reported that 68 percent of respondents to the survey who drove for motor carriers of ATA board members were told to drive longer and use all the available “legal” hours and that 29 percent of those drivers were awakened to receive those instructions.







That last part really used to tick my wife off, she's a light sleeper anyway. She might have just enough time to grab a few hours sleep and the bleepin' Qualcomm would go off and you couldn't turn it down or off. Just so some numbnut dispatcher could ask her something stupid or tell her what she already knew.
 
That last part really used to tick my wife off, she's a light sleeper anyway. She might have just enough time to grab a few hours sleep and the bleepin' Qualcomm would go off and you couldn't turn it down or off. Just so some numbnut dispatcher could ask her something stupid or tell her what she already knew.

One time I wrapped mine up in a walmart bag and left it sitting on the step and slammed the door on the cord. The stupid thing kept going off with stupid fleetwide messages every 15 minutes.

"SEVERE WEATHER ALERT, DRIVERS IN N/W IOWA - ICE/SNOW, WIND, FREEZING RAIN, PIANOS FALLING FROM THE SKY, BLAH BLAH BLAH" When I'm 1200 miles away from that area and don't give a damn.

Then another one "GOOD MORNING. YOUR 6 MONTH SAFETY BONUS EVALUATIONS ARE IN. PLEASE SEE YOUR DISPATCHER NEXT TIME YOU ARE NEAR YOUR HOME TERMINAL, BLAH BLAH BLAH"

Followed by: "COMPUTERS ARE DOWN IN IOWA. PLEASE CALL THE 800 NUMBER FOR DISPATCH"

Then 20 minutes later: "COMPUTERS ARE BACK UP AND RUNNING, THX"

Our newer Qualcomms we got when they went to e-logs don't make that loud beep like the old ones. They just make a sound that sounds like a bird chirping. But it still wakes me up because it's a sound that I'm "tuned" into because I know what it is. It's almost like how a mother can sleep through a parade of fire trucks driving past the house, but when that 8 month old baby makes the slightest little whimper in his sleep in the next room, she's wide awake.
 
I don't know how Becka ever got any sleep. Too much light, too hot, too cold, don't have HER pillow.
All 3 dogs snore, including the Big Dog.
She didn't know me back then, because i'm a whiz at making electronic gizmos do what i want.
The first step would have been to splice in a kill switch!
 

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