The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMSCA) has announced it’s conducting a research project titled, “Impact of Motorcoach Driver Compensation on Safety Performance.” The purpose of the project, according to FMCSA, is to gather information on motorcoach driver pay and the associated safety performance of the driver, to see if there is a relationship between driver pay and safe driving.
The ABA is opposed to this research initiative. Safe driving performance has nothing to do with driver compensation. Instead, this is a blatant effort to chip away at the current driver overtime pay exemption under the Federal Labor Standards Act. Further, FMCSA has no jurisdiction over compensation structures. The Agency is merely framing this initiative as “safety related” in order to claim authority to regulate driver pay. Finally, the methods and rates of what a motorcoach company compensates its drivers, is proprietary. In a highly competitive business environment such as the private motorcoach industry, such information is not readily shared.
Currently, FMCSA is in the process of preparing a survey to send to motorcoach operators to gather data on driver compensation structures, to support their research. As part of this outreach, you or your company may be contacted and requested to provide information about your driver pay structure(s). The contact may come from either an FMCSA employee or the Agency’s contractor/subcontractor on this project, Maineway Services or Abt SRBI.
In the event you are contacted, ABA recommends not providing any information at this time. Additionally, if you are contacted, we ask you to let us know of the contact and the specific request or questions you received.
ABA will continue to seek more information from Congress and FMCSA regarding this initiative. We will also provide additional updates as necessary.
For more information about this research project, please click here.
Questions? Contact
Suzanne Te Beau Rohde, Vice President Government Affairs and Policy
Office: (202) 218-7224
Email: srohde@buses.org