Over 11,500 Area Truck Drivers, Environmentalists, and Community Members to Ports: “Clean Air Requires Stable Workforce & Greener Standards – Now”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, July 30, 2007

CONTACT:
Barb Maynard, 213-387-0780
Jania Palacios, 520-404-7643
http://www.cleanandsafeports.org/

LONG BEACH - Dozens of port drivers supported by members of a unique coalition today presented Long Beach harbor commissioners with over 11,500 signed petitions to urge the Ports to strengthen their proposal to reduce the deadly truck emissions that have sparked a local public health crisis. More than 5,000 truck drivers who serve the San Pedro Bay Ports - nearly 30 percent of the workforce - signed on to state their desire to become employees as proposed in the Clean Trucks Program. The drivers are backed by more than 6,500 Californians who signed a similar petition supporting higher green standards and an immediate employee workforce, gathered by a leading environmental group that is part of the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports.

At their weekly meeting, commissioners were also alerted to the coercive measures some trucking companies are waging against drivers who support the plan's principles to shift the burden of buying and maintaining trucks from the 16,000 underpaid drivers who serve the ports. The California Trucking Association is aggressively lobbying to avoid responsibility for the cleaner, alternative-fueled trucks and technologies needed to cut pollution by 90 percent, as it would require companies to pay their fair share and employ the drivers who haul goods for their shipper clients.

"Port drivers and Southern California taxpayers are speaking out because they have footed the bill for the industry's toxic air pollution for too long," said Rupal Patel, of Communities for Clean Ports, the coalition group which spearheaded the petition drive. "Now it's the Ports' job to take immediate action to make environmental accountability the cost of doing business in our backyard."

The Ports are required to sharply reduce pollution in order to expand. Currently, port truck drivers are misclassified as "independent contractors," a system that forces individual workers to buy and maintain the trucks - instead of the companies that hire them to move goods for rich corporations like Target, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot. Replacing or retrofitting old trucks under this scenario is untenable because after the drivers pay insurance, taxes, gas, and other operating expenses, they in effect become minimum wage workers who cannot afford to comply with clean-air standards.

Thousands of signatures, constituent correspondence, positive press coverage, and recent public forums indicate overwhelming support for passage of a Clean Trucks Program that provides all drivers with full and immediate employee rights to clean the air, improve jobs and create safe, healthy communities. Despite the evidence, the California Trucking Association recently conducted its own survey that claimed drivers wished to remain under the current status quo and work long hours to get paid by the individual load - without health care, job protection, sick leave, or vacation.

Rene Estrada, a driver of three years who signed on to the drivers' petition to support employee rights, said his supervisor intimidated him in an apparent effort to rig the boss' survey.

"They call me 'independent,' but I'm not, because a dispatcher told me and the other guys we had to change our answers to say we wanted to remain independent contractors. We all did, because we know where our paycheck comes from."

He added: "I'm scared I will get fired now. But I've had enough. Too many drivers are living in fear, and today I speak for them. I hope the Ports listen because tomorrow I may not have any work at all. We want to become employees - it's the only way to clean the air and make better lives for our families."

Estrada and other drivers will join Communities for Clean Ports and the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports to present the petitions to the LA Harbor Commission this Thursday evening.

Oakland port drivers in support of a similar clean trucks plan delivered 1,200 petitions last week, the majority of a workforce of roughly 1,500-2,000 truckers. According to the California Resources Air Board, pollution from port and freight transport is the culprit for as many as 2,400 premature deaths each year throughout the state, and accounts for more than 1.1 million school absences a year. Those affected by the disproportionately high rates of asthma and lung cancer include the drivers' own children.

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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