Worker Profile: Leonel Orellana

Leonel has been a truck driver in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for four years. He has two young children with asthma who are very sensitive to the weather and the air quality in Southern California.

He’s visited the emergency room countless times when his children get asthma attacks. They’re hooked up to two machines to help them breathe, says Leonel. “It’s something very sad for a father to see.”

Leonel knows that his truck is part of the pollution problem in the Harbor. On average he and 16,000 other port drivers spend up to four hours waiting in long lines to pick up containers, with engines idling, spewing pollution. Leonel says that he finds it ironic that what he does for a living is sickening and killing children.

Knowing how important it is to clean up the air by improving the working conditions of port drivers like him, Leonel has began playing a more active role in his workplace by sharing with fellow drivers the importance of supporting the Ports’ Clean Trucks Program.

He has attended L.A. and Long Beach Harbor Commission meetings and public forums to talk about the need to change the broken port trucking system.

“Drivers like me need to speak out about the asthma in our families and communities,” he says. “I want clean air for my children and for all the people at the ports, but I can’t do it as an independent contractor. The Ports’ plan to make us employees is the only solution.”