Los Angeles to launch port driver mandate next year

The Port of Los Angeles plans to begin phasing in the employee-driver mandate in its clean-truck program over three years with a requirement that each motor carrier handle 20 percent of the company’s gate moves with employee drivers by the end of 2011.

The program, upheld this month by a federal judge in a decision that faces appeal, will set the first compliance date at Dec. 31, 2011. The port would then require that 66 percent of the gate moves by each trucking company be by employee drivers by Dec. 31, 2012, with 100 percent of the gate moves by employee drivers by Dec. 31, 2013.

The employee-driver mandate is contained in the port’s clean-truck concession requirements, which were upheld last week by U.S. District Court Judge Christina A. Snyder.

The American Trucking Associations challenged the controversial concession requirements in the Port of Los Angeles clean-truck program, widely seen as a boost to union efforts to organize port drivers, in a lawsuit filed two years ago. ATA charges state and local entities are prohibited by federal preemption law from regulating the rates, routes and services of motor carriers engaged in interstate commerce.

Judge Snyder last year, on instructions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of certain concession requirements, including the employee-driver mandate.

After hearing the case on its merits this summer, however, Judge Snyder ruled the port could implement the concession requirements. The port staff on Friday released some details of the implementation plan, and will present the entire plan to the Board of Harbor Commissioners on Sept. 27.

“Now that we have won the case, the port would like to implement the full concession as soon as it is reasonably practicable, but adjust the schedule to allow both our port staff and our motor carriers to prepare for compliance with some of the remaining program elements,” said Geraldine Knatz, the port’s executive director.

The ATA has filed with Judge Snyder its intention to appeal her decision. ATA will ask that the court reinstate the injunction prohibiting implementation of the concession requirements.

If the employee-driver mandate is upheld, it will open the door for the Teamsters union to organize the drivers in Los Angeles.
(Source:www.joc.com)