California Port Truckers Strike Closes Three Terminals

Port truckers organizing with the Teamsters in Los Angeles and Long Beach are showing their growing leverage. This time their minority strike shut down one of the L.A. port's biggest terminals. Above, a picket line at the Green Fleet Systems yard. Photo: Teamsters.

On strike again, port truckers organizing with the Teamsters in Los Angeles and Long Beach are showing their growing leverage.

For the first time, three marine terminals—including one of the L.A. port’s biggest—were shuttered all day Monday, after 120 truckers walked out at Pac 9 Transportation, Green Fleet Services, and Total Transportation Services (TTSI).

Evergreen Container Terminal told the three trucking companies “they are not welcome on the docks until the labor dispute [ends],” driver Alex Paz reported yesterday.

“Our employers are shut down,” he said. “This means that all drivers at our companies are idle. This is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

It’s the California truckers’ fourth strike in a year. Others were one or two days long, but this time it’s open-ended.

These are minority strikes. In November, Pac 9 driver Daniel Linares estimated 15 of his 150 co-workers would participate. “The rest say we are dreamers,” he said then. “They say we are crazy fighting for our rights.”

But with three terminals forced closed, the dreamers aren’t looking so crazy.

Illegal Retaliation

Ships arrive at the ports laden with goods made in Asia. Truckers’ job is to transport the containers to warehouses for big retailers such as Skechers Shoes, Forever 21, and Costco. Around 12,000 work at the port.

The strikes are over unfair labor practices, including retaliation. Paz, for instance, used to work at TTSI, but was fired after filing wage theft claims with the state. “My employer was in the room when I testified,” he said. “Days later, he fired me.”

Also new: port truckers in Georgia held a protest rally this morning too, though they stopped short of striking. They’re battling to be considered employees rather than independent contractors.

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California truckers have fought the same issue, and won a series of determinations. In last November’s strike Pac 9 was still claiming its drivers were independent contractors.

After the union took it to the National Labor Relations Board, the company settled. “There’s now a sign posted at our company stating that we are employees, not independent contractors, and have the right to form a union,” says Linares.

But he said Pac 9 continues to punish those involved in the organizing by giving them less work.

Green Fleet for its part “has broken nearly every labor law on the books trying to stop us,” striker Barry Contreras said, including “giving us unsafe trucks to work with. When they break down, they send us home, leaving us with less work.”

‘A Sweatshop on Trucks’

By organizing, Jane Slaughter reported last year, the truckers hope to win a more livable wage and some control over their working conditions:

Port truckers in the huge L.A.-Long Beach ports are largely immigrants. Most lease their vehicles from the companies that employ them, with payments deducted from their paychecks. Also deducted are charges for parking, diesel fuel, and insurance, including insurance on the cargo.

“Last Friday I only got less than $200,” striker Daniel Linares said, “for working six days a week, from early in the morning to 4 or 5 in the afternoon.”

Sometimes he makes $400-$500, he said, but even so, “this job is a sweatshop on trucks. It’s a miserable wage, not even close to a living wage. The company is making millions of dollars and giving us crumbles.”

Comments

Omitted a Key Point

In this article you omitted a key point: These port truckers, who work for some of the same maritime companies as ILWU longshoremen, are trying to organize a union with the help of the Teamsters, were able to shut down terminals only because longshore workers whose coastwide contract had expired July 1 honored their picket lines. As is usual in longshore negotiations, the contract was not extended, enabling longshoremen (who load and unload ships) to give their bargaining team more leverage by taking job actions. That's why the port truckers chose to picket Monday, to have maximum impact by appealing to longshoremen to honor their picket and shut down the three terminals.

However, in "a strange turn of events" as the Journal of Commerce, the maritime employers' newspaper, reported on the same day your article appeared the "arbitrator was called in and, to no one’s surprise, ruled that the truckers’ action did not constitute a “bona fide” picket under the waterfront contract. He ordered the longshoremen back to work, and they promptly returned to their jobs."

The arbitrator was called by Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), the employers' group, because the ILWU International officers – after earlier refusing to extend the contract, thus allowing union members to respect any picket line, or to strike – suddenly, just as the truckers picketing began to pick up a head of steam agreed to extend the contract for three days, long enough to kill the port truckers' picket. The result: longshore workers stopped work for two hours on Tuesday while the arbitrator made his pre-determined decision. Then, under the direction of their union officials, longshoremen returned to work, despite the fact that the ILWU has a long and proud tradition of not crossing picket lines. Clearly, this was a deal worked out in cahoots with PMA head, McKenna, and ILWU International officers at the negotiating table "to keep the cargo moving" at the expense of labor solidarity.

This principle of honoring picket lines is one of ILWU's 10 Guiding Principles and not infrequently has meant defying arbitrators' orders to cross picket lines. That principle has been seriously eroded in recent years, particularly in regard to port truckers in major West Coast ports. Longshoremen crossing port truckers' picket lines have taken the wind out of the sail of their union organizing efforts several times. Now that the ILWU has quit the AFL-CIO, it is especially important for the ILWU to garner as much support as possible of port workers, union and nonunion, during these seminal contract negotiations.

By honoring port truckers' picket lines ILWU will gain important allies and perhaps new union members in the fight against maritime employers. Better yet, by striking together, longshore workers and port truckers could shut down every West Coast port tight and call on East and Gulf Coast ports like Charleston who are in contract negotiations to join together for what could be a powerful display of workers solidarity. That kind of class struggle is what built the unions in the first place and is sorely needed now.

In addition to the Teamsters, truckers groups in several ports are seeking to organize the terribly overworked and underpaid port truckers, as well as to overturn laws and rulings mis-classifying them as “independent contractors.” Port truckers, many of whom are immigrant workers, should have the right to join the union of their choice, and by supporting their fight, longshore workers can strike a powerful blow to defend their own jobs, working conditions and benefits. But it all begins by respecting picket lines, the basic trade union line in the class struggle.

[Jack Heyman is chair of the Transport Workers Solidarity whose members have helped initiate and organize ILWU's 1984 protest strike against a ship from apartheid South Africa, the 2008 May Day West Coast Ports Strike against the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2011 Bay Area ports shutdown in solidarity with the Wisconsin public workers' occupation of the state capitol.]

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