Why unions are becoming a problem for self-driving cars

Zoom in: Multiple labor groups throughout the country are pushing back on behalf of truckers, bus drivers and other professional vehicle operators.

• Teamsters Local 25 in Boston recently joined a coalition to support a proposed ordinance that Waymo says would effectively ban its self-driving cars from operating in the city.
• The Transport Workers Union recently said it "strongly opposes the testing of autonomous vehicles from Waymo on New York City streets."
• The Amalgamated Transit Union has warned that "autonomous vehicles could threaten our members' jobs."
• The Drivers Union in Tukwila, Washington — which is affiliated with Teamster Local 117 — said it's "highly opposed to the City of Seattle, the State of Washington, or any local jurisdiction permitting robotaxis to travel on our public roads without human safety operators."

State of play: Waymo and Tesla are the two primary companies that have begun self-driving car services, offering rides to customers in places like Phoenix, San Francisco and Austin.

• Waymo this week announced plans to start testing its vehicles in Detroit, Las Vegas and San Diego.
• At the same time, Aurora Innovation has been testing self-driving semi-trucks between Houston and Dallas and last week announced testing between El Paso and Fort Worth, citing a "perfect driverless on-time and safety record" so far.

On a national level, the Teamsters — whose membership base includes the legion of truck drivers at UPS — has called for a national regulatory standard requiring a human operator in all autonomous vehicles.

• And that human operator should remain subject to federal requirements for commercial driver's licenses (CDL), the union contends.
• "Allowing the unfettered and unregulated operation of autonomous vehicles — ultimately seeking to replace human drivers with robots — is unequivocally a threat to safety on our roadways and the existence of good jobs in the trucking industry," Teamsters president Sean O'Brien testified before Congress in July.

The big picture: Arthur Wheaton, a union expert at Cornell University, said the labor movement's concern about driverless vehicles should come as no surprise.

• In the auto industry, for example, workers have been concerned for decades about robots taking their jobs, he noted.
• "It's been a fight for hundreds of hundreds of years about technology replacing workers," Wheaton tells Axios. "I could see where the Teamsters would be upset about that."

The other side: "Waymo has a proven track record of making transportation safer, more accessible, and more sustainable in the cities where we operate," Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher said in a statement. "Transportation is a team sport, and we believe autonomous vehicles, professional drivers, and the wider ecosystem will thrive together as we increase transportation options for everyone."

• Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
• But Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in October on an earnings call that "we expect to have no safety drivers at all at least in parts of Austin," where it recently launched its first self-driving car ride-hailing service. He added that the company is "being very cautious about the deployment."

The intrigue: The promise of self-driving cars has largely been cheered by elected Democrats and Republicans alike in recent years.

• The Obama, Biden and Trump administrations have all generally been welcoming of autonomous vehicles, though none has successfully pursued what the industry has long wanted: a single national regulatory standard, compared with the current patchwork of state regulations.
• The Obama administration, for example, viewed self-driving cars as a key component to achieving its vision of zero crashes on American roadways someday.

What to watch: Whether Teamsters president O'Brien — who has counseled President Trump on issues like film tariffs and the appointment of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer — uses his position to press the White House to require safety drivers in vehicles.