Calif. Trucking Keeps Overtime Exemption

July 7, 2000 9:25 AM, EDT

The fear of some California trucking operations that they would have to start paying their drivers overtime after eight hours of work in a day was put to rest when a July 1 deadline passed without authorities changing trucking’s exemption from state work rules.

A 1999 law put California back on a daily overtime schedule instead of the weekly rules most states follow. The law also ordered the state Industrial Welfare Commission to examine all overtime exemptions, including the one applying to truck drivers.

Some in trucking feared that the IWC would meddle with the exemption, but the July 1 deadline passed without that happening. The Eight-Hour Day Restoration and Workplace Flexibility Act was signed by Gov. Gray Davis in July 1999 ("California Turns Back the Clock on Overtime Pay ," 12-27, p. 5.)

Warren Hoemann, vice president of the California Trucking Association, said CTA attended each of the IWC’s public hearings on the exemptions, which were held at least once a month since November.

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