California unions join greenies to zap small harbour truckers

A COMMON front of union members and environmentalists campaigning to force small truckers off the docks in favour of big business is now being countered by another common front of shippers and transport interests fighting to keep harbours open to all, reports American Shipper.

The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, backed by the Sierra Club and the Teamsters, now faces a Group of 31 business organisations backed by the National Retail Federation, National Industrial Transportation League, World Shipping Council and US Chamber of Commerce.

Environmentalists say cleaner trucks can best be provided by big business while the Teamsters find the workers at large trucking companies more susceptible to union membership than the owner-operators they are trying to eliminate.

The business coalition has appealed to US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to oppose changing to the Federal Aviation Administration Authorisation Act (FAAAA) to allow local governments to effect such small trucker bans as the coalition and City of Los Angeles wants to do.

"We urge you to oppose these efforts as we believe they will be detrimental to interstate commerce and US competitiveness," said the letter from the business group.

The issue now centres on whether the small operators are truly owner operators or abused employees. Like share croppers, junior partners in small trucking firms do not have as great a stake in the operation as senior members and a result earn less.

This provokes arguments that they are not truly owner operators, but employees without health and safety entitlements. Small trucker ban proponents point to recent judgments against port drayage companies for misclassification of port truckers and said they "underscore the need for sweeping reform to end systematic abuses at America's ports."

California attorney general Edmund Jerry Brown said he had won his fifth lawsuit against a trucking company that he characterised as an "ongoing investigation of the state's underground economy."

Said Sierra Club president Allison Chin: "Coast to coast, thousands of companies force the cost of truck operation and maintenance onto the workers behind the wheel, and as a result the old, diesel-spewing rigs fill US transportation corridors because that's all these low-wage earners can afford."

The focus on worker misclassification "is not new, it's just that Clean and Safe Ports is using it to talk about their issue," said Clayton Boyce, a spokesman for the American Trucking Associations, whose members are owner-operators. "It's a public relations strategy."

Source: www.schednet.com