The Problem

The Problem

Prior to the deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980, port truck drivers enjoyed a middle class standard of living. Today, big box retailers and steam ship lines are fueling a race to the bottom, forcing trucking companies to compete by undercutting each other and paying drivers less. Since deregulation, many trucking companies shifted employees to “independent contractor” status. The trucking companies now pass the cost of owning and maintaining trucks onto drivers and avoid paying payroll taxes, Social Security, Medicare and workers’ compensation.  The result is a workforce that live in poverty.

Public Health Crisis

Port diesel pollution is associated with high rates of cancer and asthma.  The California Air Resources Board conducted a Health Risk Assessment study of West Oakland that found that West Oakland residents are about 2 1/2 times more likely to get cancer than other people living in the Bay Area.  According to the American Lung Association, one in five West Oakland children has asthma, and the West Oakland area has the highest asthma hospitalization rates in California. 

"Residents living in the shadow of the Port of Oakland can expect to die, on average, more than a decade before residents of the Oakland Hills and, appalingly, this gap may be increasing," according to testimony by Dr. Anthony B. Iton, Director, Alameda County Public Health Department before the Assembly Committees on Labor and Employment, and Select Committee on Ports.  "Similarly, rates of other environmentally-linked diseases such as emphysema, congestive heart failure, heart attack, and disturbingly, lung cancer and other forms of cancer are disproportionately higher in West Oakland than the rest of the county and burgeoning evidence suggests that the risk may be directly associated with living in proximity to port trucking routes."

Sweatshop Working Conditions

After clearing expenses, many truck drivers make as little as $8 an hour and receive no benefits.  They can barely support their families and cannot afford health care let alone truck replacements, upgrades and maintenance required to meet new State mandated environmental standards.

A broken port trucking system forces drivers to sit idle in their trucks for hours everyday while their trucks spew out toxic diesel emissions that the drivers and residents of the surrounding port communities are forced to breathe.

Chronic Unemployment

The Port of Oakland is an economic engine for the entire San Francisco Bay Area.  But West Oakland residents living in the neighborhoods next to the Port, who are primarily low-income, receive all the health risks of truck pollution, but few of the economic benefits.  Trucking companies offer no effective local hire programs for West Oakland residents.

Responsible Businesses Undercut

Responsible trucking companies who treat workers with respect and use less polluting trucks are being put at a competitive disadvantage by trucking firms and big box shippers who drive rates down by abusing the broken system.