Teamsters Attempt to Roadblock Innovation on California’s Streets

If it were up to the Teamsters, they would have us all in Flintstone cars. Teamsters California filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) with the goal of overturning the decision to allow autonomous heavy-duty trucks on the state’s roads. The suit argues that self-driving trucks threaten more than 200,000 trucking jobs and asks the court to stop them from taking effect.

Earlier this year, the DMV updated its autonomous vehicle regulation to permit testing and eventual commercial operation of trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds. The Teamsters claim the agency used an abbreviated rulemaking process reserved for minor changes and failed to conduct a full economic impact study. They further allege the DMV wrongly concluded the rules would eliminate zero jobs.

This lawsuit is a clear example of rent seeking. Rather than competing on the merits in the free market, the union is attempting to use the courts to protect the status quo. The Teamsters have also argued that autonomous trucks pose an even greater safety risk than smaller self-driving cars. However, human error remains a leading cause of truck crashes.

Current examples of autonomous vehicles also demonstrate that they are much safer. For example, Waymo cars had 88% fewer property-damage claims and 92% fewer bodily-injury claims when compared to human-driven vehicles. The data make sense. Human drivers can get drunk, drowsy, and/or distracted, putting them at greater risk of an accident. By contrast, an autonomous vehicle does not face those impediments, making it safer.

Furthermore, the longer autonomous trucks are deployed, the better they become at processing more data and responding more effectively. In the same way that the more a human drives the better a driver they become, autonomous vehicles operate under the same framework. Blocking this progress will make autonomous vehicles worse and delay even greater safety improvements.

Consumers benefit from the expansion of these autonomous vehicles through lower prices. While there may be initial higher costs for carriers, driven by new specialized vehicle hardware, the savings in labor, fuel, and operational efficiency make it cheaper for carriers and consumers in the long term. Those lower shipping costs flow through to consumers as more affordable products. The technology also helps address chronic driver shortages that have constrained freight capacity for years, allowing for goods to be shipped more quickly.

Overall, adopting autonomous trucks could save consumers $9 billion by 2035. These savings are unlocked only by encouraging progress, but they will be blocked or significantly delayed if Teamsters get their way. The real losers in this are the Californians dealing with the highest cost of living in the United States, who will pay more to appease the Teamsters, while consumers in other states enjoy the benefits of technological progress.

Even the claims of job loss are misguided. Not every trucking firm will replace all its drivers, and certainly not all at once. With every innovation, some companies choose to adopt it, and others do not. Fast-food restaurants still have cashiers even with self-service kiosks; bank tellers still exist alongside ATMs; and warehouse-sorting robots have not replaced every fulfillment worker. While these technologies are effective and some jobs will shift elsewhere, speculating that an entire industry’s labor market is guaranteed to collapse is not grounded in historical reality.

Innovation creates new jobs, with 60% of current job titles only existing since 1940. Titles like software developer and marketing analyst would be completely foreign to our ancestors, but they reflect a society that has progressed over time – to the great benefit of employees, who spend less time in physical labor-intensive jobs and more time in an air-conditioned office, and consumers, who enjoy lower prices and a better quality of life.

Looking closer at the autonomous vehicle industry, analysis from the Chamber of Progress shows that every 1,000 new driverless vehicles will support the creation of 190 jobs across a wide spectrum, including software engineers, vehicle operators, and vehicle technicians. Autonomous trucks will support vehicle operators by creating new and evolved roles rather than simply eliminating them. While long-haul driving decreases, the technology generates demand for human operators in remote monitoring, safety oversight, fleet management, first- and last-mile operations, and specialized technical positions. AV companies are already hiring for vehicle operator roles alongside technicians, sensor specialists, and safety operations staff.

In terms of wages, that same analysis found that 82% of the autonomous vehicle workforce would be making more than the current median wage, including those without a college degree. Simply put, the Teamsters are willing to block future high-wage job creation if it means that they can temporarily keep their market share exactly as it exists under the status quo.

The real winners if the Teamsters lawsuit is successful would be the Teamsters union itself. By fearmongering about autonomous vehicles, Teamsters can position themselves as a bulwark against “evil tech companies” eliminating jobs. For truckers, many of whom operate independently of any company or union, that fear may compel them to give up their entrepreneurial mindset and join the Teamsters, increasing the number of dues-paying members and further enriching leadership, who earn well above the median Californian. The end result is that consumers and truckers suffer as Teamsters profit.

This is not the first time unions in California have halted progress for their own rent-seeking benefits. In 2020, the California Federation of Labor Unions (which includes California Teamsters) mobilized to oppose California’s Proposition 22, which allowed rideshare drivers to operate as independent contractors and preserve their flexibility in working hours and earnings. Fortunately, voters chose to uphold the liberty of independent contractors over union coddling. Last year, California unions also pushed to limit grocery stores from implementing self-checkout kiosks, even as consumers report preferring these to human-run checkouts. The common thread is that California unions will tend to put their own self-interest over the interests of consumers, workers, and innovation.

Blocking progress on the home front does not stop it from happening elsewhere. Autonomous vehicles have been making incredible progress in China as the government encourages automakers to test their products and make improvements. By 2030, 20% of cars sold in China will be completely driverless, and 70% will have advanced assisted driving technology. Looking at the trucking industry, Pony.ai, one of the leading companies, predicts that it will have 100,000 robotrucks on the road by 2030. This will allow China to drive down its already low labor costs and increase its competitiveness on the world stage. 

The Teamsters lawsuit reflects a vested interest in cementing the status quo for its own sake and in their own interests, at the expense of ordinary Californians. In reality, autonomous vehicles represent a future where goods are cheaper, better-paying jobs exist, and streets are safer.

California is the home of so much technical innovation. Allowing organizations like the Teamsters halt it with their rent-seeking behavior will only fuel an exodus of progress.