Port Commissioners to Receive Petitions from 10,000 Port Truck Drivers, Environmentalists, and Community Members: Clean Air Requires Stable Workforce & Higher Enviro Standards

Media Advisory for: Monday, July 30, 2007
Press Contact: Barb Maynard, 213-387-0780

12:30 p.m. Monday news conference, 1 p.m. port commissioners’ meeting

LONG BEACH - Dozens of members of a unique environmental-labor coalition sporting blue and green t-shirts will stage a press event Monday at 12:30 pm before presenting harbor commissioners with 10,000 petitions signed by thousands of environmentalists, community members and a quarter of the L.A. and Long Beach port driver workforce. The Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports gathered the signatures in recent weeks to support strengthening the Port's draft proposal to reduce truck emissions, which goes to a vote in September.

The Ports must sharply reduce pollution in order to expand. A key but contentious part of the solution, known as the Clean Trucks Program, aims to clean up the broken port trucking system by stabilizing the workforce. The roughly 16,000 underpaid drivers are unable to buy or afford clean, green trucks that move containers of cargo to warehouses and distribution facilities. The petitions urge the Ports to immediately reassign responsibility to the industry, the trucking companies that hire the drivers, and retail shipper clients like Wal-Mart and Target.

Who: Dozens of Port truck drivers, local residents, and environmental and community leaders supporting a strong Clean Trucks Program to dramatically reform environmental and workforce standards reforms to reduce deadly air pollution from the current, broken port trucking system.

Visuals: Children impacted by asthma to deliver thousands of petitions in red wagons, a giant inhaler to symbolize the scope of pollution-related illness, a blown-up replica of petitions signed by drivers.

When: Monday, July 30, 2007; 12:30 p.m. press event, 1 p.m. Harbor Commission Meeting

Where: Port Headquarters, 925 Harbor Plaza, Long Beach http://www.polb.com/facilities/maps/default.asp

Pollution from port and freight transport is the culprit for as many as premature 2,400 deaths in the state. Many affected by the disproportionately high rates of asthma and lung cancer are the drivers' own children, accounting for more than 1.1 million school absences a year.

Currently, the majority of the San Pedro Bay port drivers are misclassified as "independent contractors" - but after paying taxes, gas, insurance, and maintenance costs, they become, in effect, minimum wage workers. Environmentalists say the only way to meet emissions targets, halt deadly pollution, and prevent illness and death is to close the loophole and make all drivers immediate employees of the companies they haul goods for. The trucking industry has threatened lawsuits to preserve the deadly status quo.

The Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports will also present the petitions to the LA Harbor Commission. A majority of Oakland port drivers in support of a similar clean trucks plan delivered 1,200 petitions out of a workforce of roughly 1,500-2,000 truckers last week. For more information: http://www.cleanandsafeports.org/

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Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports * 1714 Franklin St., Suite 325, Oakland, CA 94607

The Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports is committed to working with Port stakeholders to develop a lasting solution to the crisis in port trucking. The Coalition includes environmental, labor, faith, public health and community organizations that are promoting sustainable economic development at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

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