Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Shorting truck drivers' pay with a computer program

Some men will rob you with a six gun, some with a computer software program. Truck drivers at Phoenix-based Swift Transportation Corp. have filed a class-action suit against the company for routinely shorting their pay.

Truckinginfo.com reports that drivers claim the company used a software program to calculate mileage, and that it underpaid drivers by 7 percent to 10 percent.

Court documents state that Swift's manager of contract finance from 1998-02 admitted the software consistently underreported the mileage that drivers actually log.

The Maricopa County Superior Court certified the case as a class-action suit earlier this month. The suit includes all employee drivers who worked for Swift on or after Jan. 30, 1998, or contracted with Swift as owner-operator drivers on or after the same date, and were compensated according to the number of miles driven.