It took about a year of hard-fought organizing and several weeks of balloting, but Wednesday the vote tally spoke for itself: Nearly 70 percent of New Jersey-based port truck drivers employed by the Toll Group chose to form a union. The 112 truckers, who include long-haul drivers and hostlers that move trailers within Toll’s yards, have affiliated with Teamster Local 469.
Toll, an Australian-owned transportation and logistics industry giant, had only last year agreed to allow drivers at its Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach facility to unionize with Teamster Local 848, capping a contentious struggle there. (The company’s Australian facilities have long been unionized.) Rather than learn from its California experience and take a constructive approach to labor relations, Toll flat-out fought its East Coast workers, who service the ports of New York and New Jersey. During its organizing campaign, the Teamsters filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board,
» Read more about: New Jersey Port Drivers Choose Union Representation »
The trucking industry likes to say, “If you have it, a truck brought it.” The industry’s point is that trucking is an essential and ubiquitous part of our economy.
This is true, so far as it goes. But trucks don’t drive themselves. And so at a recent meeting of the Carson City Council, a slightly different message was on display: If you want a good job, you’re no longer likely to find it in port trucking – at least not without a fight.
Carson, located 10 minutes north of Los Angeles’ harbor, is a major hub of port trucking: Fifty-two port trucking companies operate there — more than in any other Southern California city except L.A. and Long Beach; hundreds of truck drivers call Carson home and more than 1,000 port trucks are parked in town. The conditions of the industry impact the city profoundly — from road safety to environmental quality to jobs to tax revenue.
» Read more about: Carson Pledges Support for “Modern-Day Sharecroppers” »
Last Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case that had the potential to impact millions of people in Southern California – people who have been breathing cleaner air thanks to the Port of L.A.’s Clean Truck Program. The Clean Truck Program is an innovative policy that has been successful in reducing port-related truck emissions by as much as 90 percent. But it has enemies, most notably the trucking companies who profited from the dirty, unregulated system as they worked on behalf of Walmart, Target, and every other big importer.
The national trucking lobby, on behalf of these firms, sought to kill the program by challenging it in court. As we passed environmental and public health milestone after milestone, the trucking industry filed legal motion after legal motion, and the case bounced between all levels of courts. But Thursday was the big one—the highest court in the land finally weighed in on the legality of the program overall.
» Read more about: Supreme Court Blocks Industry Bid to Kill Clean Truck Program »
What do big banks and L.A. port trucking companies have in common? Fine print in contracts that traps victims into signing bad deals.
We’ve all signed our share of contracts. Rental agreements, cell phone contracts, car loans. You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand the basic concept: Two parties enter into an agreement that lasts until a fixed date. And as frustrated as you may get with, say, your landlord, you know that at the very least what you’ve signed off on can’t change upon a whim. Even if you don’t like the terms, contracts are fundamentally about guaranteeing stability.
We take this for granted – but not everyone can. A case in point is drivers at Green Fleet Systems, a trucking company serving the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
In order to work as an “independent contractor” for the company,
(Orlando Ayala has been a truck driver at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach for 10 years. He recently sat down and talked to LAANE Deputy Director Patricia Castellanos about the successful effort to improve conditions at Toll, the global logistics company where he works. Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the election in which Toll workers chose to be represented by a union – the first such election in three decades.)
I was recently accused of thinking with my heart and not with my head, of letting my passions and outrage get the best of me and guide my actions. At the time, this wasn’t a compliment. But these traits have served me well. If not for them, I may not have crossed multiple borders seeking a better life in the U.S., or been driven to action by the outrage I felt at seeing injustices suffered by the thousands of port truck drivers at the largest port in the country.
» Read more about: How Organizing for a Union Changed My Life »
Last week, we reported on the legal struggle at port trucking company Seacon Logix, whose drivers filed claims with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) seeking reimbursement for a number of wage-and- hour violations, including illegal paycheck deductions made by the company. After the DLSE ruled in favor of the drivers in early 2012 – finding that the drivers were not independent contractors, but were actually misclassified employees – the company appealed the ruling.
On Thursday, a California Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the drivers in every respect, coming to the same conclusions as the DLSE. The court found that drivers were misclassified and ordered the company to pay the four drivers $107,802. Five additional drivers at the same company have similar claims pending.
This is the first in an anticipated wave of rulings addressing conditions for misclassified port truck drivers.
» Read more about: Court: Seacon Logix Port Truck Drivers Are Misclassified »
It’s almost payday. Imagine if you went to cash your paycheck only to find that your employer had instead billed you for the opportunity to work for them.
For drivers at Seacon Logix, paying to work was only the beginning of the abuses they faced from their employer, a midsized port trucking company based in Carson.
A group of nine Seacon Logix drivers has persisted for almost two years in seeking to reclaim their wages even as the company has reached a new low in an already notoriously low-road industry.
Seacon Logix didn’t just evade the law by claiming that its employees were “independent contractors,” allowing it to avoid basic responsibilities, like payroll, income taxes and workers compensation insurance.
It didn’t just pass on its operating costs to drivers and force them to pay for vehicle leases, registration and insurance payments by illegally deducting them straight out of drivers’
» Read more about: How Low Can a Port Trucking Company Go? »
In 1996 I began working at the Parent Center of Wilmington Middle School. I quickly learned how students suffer from asthma, respiratory deficiencies, malnourishment, cancer and autism. Many of these poor health conditions are linked to the pollution and poverty of the area.
I decided to join the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports, hoping to help clean our air and reduce disease in my community. Over the past several years we have made huge progress. I believe these accomplishments were possible because so many of us came together, from residents and community-based organizations to port truck drivers, lawmakers and unions. Although it is a cliché to say there is strength in unity, in this case it was true.
Today we are fighting to change the conditions of port truck drivers – and we are still unified.
We believe that everyone who works should be valued by their employer.
(This is the second in a three-part series about the misclassification of employees as independent contractors – a practice which affects millions of workers in the U.S., including most of the nation’s nearly 100,000 port truck drivers.)
Within the major trifecta of tactics used by today’s employers to slash the cost of labor and to maintain pre-New Deal levels of control over their workers, independent contractor misclassification is perhaps the most powerful and ubiquitous. (The others are the sub-contracting of essential functions and the use of temporary workers.)
Each of these ways of doing business damages the economy, suppresses wages for all workers and undermines popular and well-established laws designed to protect them. Yet independent contractor misclassification stands out in terms of its sheer boldness. When used as a shield against employer obligations by key industries (rather than a genuine administrative mistake by “Mom and Pop” shops) it’s a defiant avoidance of the hard-won,
» Read more about: Name Games: The Cost of Independent Contractor Misclassification »
(This is the first in a three-part series about the misclassification of employees as independent contractors – a practice which affects millions of workers in the U.S., including most of the nation’s nearly 100,000 port truck drivers).
At the zenith of the Occupy movement, some commentators adopted the term “neo-feudalism” to describe the relationship between powerful corporations and the rest of society. Did this rhetoric have a basis? Yes and no. A portion of today’s workforce labors under conditions that resemble the dark era of the 19th century more than they do either the medieval or the modern one.
First, a little background. In the social and legal world of medieval England (which, for better or worse, begat our legal system), one’s employer was one’s master, landlord, and protector – and all these relationships were encased within the Church and the great chain of being.
Imagine you just finished your standard 65-hour work week. You’re exhausted, you want to go home and spend time with your family – you never really get to see them but for your one day off – but you know instead you’re going to fall asleep within minutes of getting home. Your legs and back ache from today’s 12-hour shift, but at least it’s payday. You wince when you see your check: It’s going to be another month of some tough decisions about which bill to forgo, but at least the rent will get paid and you’ll be able to pick up some groceries.
Except that as he hands you your check, your boss tells you that he’s adding another five hours to your weekly schedule. You’re not going to get paid any more money, but you will have to work more hours.
This is essentially the situation that truck drivers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are about to find themselves in as changes roil the industry.
» Read more about: Carriers Stick Port Truck Drivers With Chassis Fees »