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Appeals Court Rules FedEx Drivers in Conn. Are Independent Contractors, Not Employees
This story appears in the March 13 print edition of Transport Topics.
An appeals court has ruled that FedEx Ground Package System drivers working out of a terminal in Hartford, Connecticut, are independent contractors and not employees of the package carrier.
In a decision earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated a decision by the National Labor Relations Board that the FedEx drivers in Hartford were 鈥渟tatutorily protected employees.鈥
But the appeals court referenced an earlier ruling that FedEx drivers working out of Wilmington, Massachusetts, are independent contractors as defined in the National Labor Relations Act.
鈥淏oth cannot be right,鈥 the D.C. appeals court said. 鈥淗aving already answered this same legal question involving the same parties and functionally the same factual record in FedEx I, we give the same answer here. The Hartford single-route FedEx drivers are independent contractors to whom the National Labor Relations Act鈥檚 protections for collective action do not apply.鈥
The appeals court said that the jurisdiction of the NLRB extends only to the relationship between an employer and its employees but does not encompass the relationship between a company and its independent contractors.
The court said the NLRB must provide a 鈥渘onexhaustive鈥 list of 10 factors, ranging from the extent of control the employer has over the driver to whether the worker is paid by the time or by the job, to determine contractor or employee status.
The NLRB argued that the 鈥減ervasive control鈥 FedEx exerted over the 鈥渆ssential details鈥 of its drivers day-to-day work and the 鈥渃ore nature鈥 of the drivers鈥 work to FedEx鈥檚 business operations made the drivers employees.
鈥淭his case is the poster child for our law-of-the-circuit doctrine, which ensures stability, consistency and evenhandedness in circuit law,鈥 the appeals court said.
Richard Pianka, deputy general counsel for American Trucking Associations, said that because courts are bound by their own prior decisions, they can鈥檛 change their minds when the facts are indistinguishable from earlier decisions, as in the Connecticut case.
鈥淪o the NLRB was having to deal with a very clear, controlling precedent that D.C. circuit was bound to follow,鈥 he said.
ATA filed a Friend of the Court brief in the case in support of FedEx.
鈥淭he owner-operator model is an important part of the trucking industry, and always has been,鈥 Pianka said. 鈥淚t allows carriers to deal with fluctuations in demand, and it allows enterprising drivers to be their own small businesses and start their businesses with a moderately small investment in their equipment,鈥 he added.
