Fighting for Clean Air & Good Jobs at the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma

Tricking Taxpayers and Truck Drivers: Goldman Sachs Brings Wall Street to the Waterfront

October 17, 2011

What’s fueling the ire behind the Occupy Wall Street protests that have spread from Manhattan’s financial district to cities in every state of the country and around the world? For starters, a certain corporation that 99% of us bailed out received $23 billion from the government but only paid one percent of its 2008 income in taxes after raking in $2.3 billion in profit.

And a new Salon.com story “Employers New Ruse: ‘Independent Contracting” may help unearth another master scheme in which Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs’ tax-avoidance maneuvering runs amok, only this time, the  industry they’re manipulating isn’t banking – it’s global shipping transportation and the tens of thousands of port truck drivers that keep our economy moving.

Salon.com tells the story of Leonardo Mejia, a truck driver for Shipper’s Transport Express, a subsidiary of the massive container terminal operator SSA Marine. Mr. Mejia is one of the nation’s port truck drivers whose employer treats them, for tax purposes, as the boss – even as they boss them around just like the rest of America’s employees. In other words, his company simply hands him a 1099 rather than a W-2, and voila! – bye-bye pesky payroll taxes and business expenses.

Misclassification, as it’s more wonkily known in Department of Labor and union parlance, cost the U.S. government an estimated $54 billion in underreported employment taxes, according to a 2009 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

What the story doesn’t report, is that Goldman Sachs owns half of the global supply chain giant that Mr. Mejia hauls for, one of the world’s largest transportation and shipping outfits in the U.S. – and the entire planet.

Home foreclosures aren’t enough, apparently. U.S. port truck drivers like Mr. Mejia are facing “foreclosures on wheels” at the hands of Goldman Sachs-owned SSA Marine. Here’s a snippet:

Mejia is part of the shadow economy…purposefully created from the top down, its growth driven by employers increasingly eager to shed costly, legally mandated commitments to their employees.

On an economy-wide scale, the calculated misclassification of employees as independent contractors is a nightmare for workers. It removes the normal protections employers are legally required to give their employees without offering any real freedom in exchange. The practice is also a disaster for governments struggling to balance their budgets, depriving both federal and state governments of billions of dollars in tax revenue.

“It’s a great scheme. The boss pretends their employee is his or her own boss to skirt taxes and force business costs onto the workers, and then the real boss bosses that worker around just like every other employer,” said Dr. David Bensman of Rutgers University, a co-author of a groundbreaking research report, The Big Rig: Poverty, Pollution and the Misclassification of Truck Drivers at America’s Ports,which concluded the typical port truck driver is truly an employee.

“Gaming the system, Goldman Sachs’ Wall Street style is not welcome at our trade hubs, one of the state’s most valuable economic engines,” wrote California Assemblymember Sandre` Swanson in an Oakland Tribune editorial. “World-class ports are vital to our economic progress. We cannot permit Wall Street-style trickery to stand in our way.”

And if you’re a part of the 99% that’s fed up with Goldman Sachs anti-worker, tax-avoidance games at our country’s ports then sign your name to the growing list of Americans who are doing something about it.

Had Enough of Pollution & Poverty? Pledge to End It.

September 30, 2011

A Word from Patricia Castellanos, Chair of the Los Angeles Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports

Our movement for environmental and economic justice was dealt a real blow by corporate polluters and anti-union interests this week. They convinced the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals panel that an arcane loophole in the law prevents the nation’s largest port from fully implementing the EPA-award winning LA Clean Truck Program.

Are you willing to stand with the nation’s port workers and residents who are pledging to not take this sitting down?  The nation’s 110,000 first-rate truck drivers who have long been subjected to third-world working conditions will be the first to feel the impact of this blow – along with the 87 million Americans who live and work in polluted port regions. Now they need to hear that we will fight back with them.

While top-notch attorneys representing the port and environmental groups like Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council succeeded in preserving many of the pioneering standards that helped introduce thousands of clean trucks into service, conservative judges put the brakes on the regulation that would stop the industry’s dirty tricks that brought diesel-soaked air and dead-end jobs to our communities in the first place.

If upheld, profitable, multi-national corporations like Maersk and the Goldman Sachs- owned SSA Marine will continue to disguise their truck drivers as independent contractors in a widespread scheme to cheat on taxes and force struggling blue-collar workers to buy and maintain the next generation of green trucks. Underpaid truck drivers and overburdened taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for industry giant’s diesel mess!

Pledge to support these workers in their fight to make the global shipping and trucking industry pay to clean up their dirty diesel mess, and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve! 

Thousands of truck drivers are standing up and speaking out, and they need to know we have their backs. Take the pledge to amplify their voices and ask your friends to do the same. Across the country, I, along with partners from over 150 organizations united in the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports, will personally share your show of solidarity with truck drivers in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, New York, Newark, Houston and Miami.

Your past support of the LA Clean Truck Program and the Clean Ports Act of 2011 demonstrates you care deeply about clean air and good, green jobs.  Let’s show these corporate bullies who trample on workers and pollute our communities just how much powerful we become when the going gets tough.

The Battle in Seattle & Beyond

September 16, 2011

According to a front page expose in the Seattle Times “truck drivers who serve Seattle’s busy shipping port say they’re losing patience with chronically low pay and poor working conditions.”

No truer words have been spoken.

Port truck drivers, community activists, environmentalists and faith leaders used the backdrop of the annual American Association of Port Authorities convention in Seattle to bring attention to the dirty and broken port trucking industry plaguing workers and communities in port cities around the country.

The weeklong series of direct action began with a massive 600-person rally at the airport to welcome conference attendees. On the first morning of the convention  pranksters slipped a revised conference agenda underneath the doors of all 900 rooms at the Westin Hotel, promoting mock sessions like The ‘Green Washing’ of the Cargo Supply Chain Award and Integrating Jim Crow into Today’s Workplace. By mid-week, port drivers and faith leaders from Seattle, Oakland and Los Angeles sang the African-American spiritual “Wade in the Water” after police prevented them from presenting a petition to the Port of Seattle Commissioners which asserts the rights of port truck drivers to a “family-sustaining wage,” collective-bargaining rights, clean restrooms, pay for time wasted in traffic or at entry gates, and money to afford the newer, cleaner trucks that the Port might require by 2015.

By the end of the week protesters gathered outside the conference hotel and shut down 5^th Avenue in downtown Seattle. Throughout the week organizations like the Sierra Club, Puget Sound SAGE, the Teamsters, the Church Council of Greater Seattle and the Rainforest Action Network stood in solidarity with port drivers and port communities to demand an end to Seattle’s ‘port of poverty and pollution.’

“We need help,” said driver Yosef Bruke. “Nobody respects us. We are called names you don’t want to hear in public. We are foreigners, but we’re just trying to make a living like everybody else. We are the middleman. We demand respect.”

But what’s happening in Seattle is only the latest in a series of driver-led actions at other ports in recent months.

In Los Angeles and Long  Beach port truck drivers working at the Toll Group – a company that handles cargo for popular apparel and athletic brands Guess? and Under Armour – marched on the boss to demand an end to Jim Crow-like working conditions where they were forced to use dirty, unsanitary restrooms while other employees were free to use permanent indoor restrooms and break facilities.

Drivers in Newark held a successful work stoppage at Ironbound Express to re-instate a co-worker who had been fired for “drinking from the wrong water fountain.” These same drivers filed wage theft lawsuits to return tens of thousands of dollars taken from their paychecks illegally and they are organizing drivers at other companies to fight trucking companies that make illegal deductions from driver paychecks.

And while a national movement of port truck drivers is organizing across ports, so is a visionary base of community, faith and environmental leaders who see a connection between the economic injustices of port truck drivers and the impact on the environment and communities.

The Rainforest Action Network  reported in their blog The Understory, “It’s crossing issues and bringing together unlikely allies to challenge corporations and politicians acting against the needs of their citizens… under the banner of “Welcome to the Port of Poverty and Pollution,” activists with RAN joined immigrant truck drivers, port communities impacted by economic and clean air issues, Teamsters, and faith leaders standing in solidarity in downtown Seattle”

Welcome To The Port Of Poverty And Pollution

September 15, 2011

*This guest blog by Scott Parkin was originally published on The Understory.

The spirit of Seattle lives.

A revolt is in motion in many parts of the country. It’s crossing issues and bringing together unlikely allies to challenge corporations and politicians acting against the needs of their citizens. In November 1999, RAN joined a diverse and lively global justice movement, which included environmentalists, labor, students, people of faith and people from many walks of life, to shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle.

This week, again in Seattle, under the banner of “Welcome to the Port of Poverty and Pollution,” activists with RAN joined immigrant truck drivers, port communities impacted by economic and clean air issues, Teamsters, and faith leaders standing in solidarity in downtown Seattle at the annual Port Authorities convention.

Actions all week have been directed at the Port of Seattle and its leadership. The Port of Seattle is responsible for inadequate wages and poor working conditions. Environmentally, the port authority is responsible for air and water pollution up and down Puget Sound, impacting communities living near the Port and SeaTac Airport. The Port of Seattle consistently sides with corporations in these matters. Ironically, the tone of the convention has been portraying the Port of Seattle as an environmentally responsible engine for job creation.

Furthermore, many of the same corporations participating in the convention are actively building or promoting the construction of coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest. SSA Marine has sought permits to build one such facility in Bellingham, WA. Another convention participant is Burlington Northern, which ships coal from Montana to Washington’s ports.

RAN has formed a guerrilla projections team that has been traveling around Seattle after-hours, beaming images in solidarity with this week’s protests. Tomorrow, there will be a mass rally outside the convention.

Twelve years ago, we were part of an anti-corporate globalization movement fighting privatization and resource extraction abroad. Today we’re part of an anti-corporate movement fighting privatization, resource extraction, and climate change at home. We saw it earlier this year when thousands occupied the capitol building of Wisconsin over attacks against public sector unions. We saw it all summer as environmentalists marched, locked down, danced, scaled trees, went to prison and sat-in fighting Big Oil and Big Coal. We’re seeing it as community groups and labor are fighting against home foreclosures and tax dodging by the wealthiest companies on the planet.

A few weeks ago, labor, faith, student and many more joined with environmentalists to call on Obama to stop the Keystone XL pipeline by sitting in at the White House. Cities across the country are seeing coalitions form and fight back against local issues of “poverty and pollution” more and more. This convergence is what frightened the powers that be in 1999. Now we’re back again.

Port Convention Attacked by Pranksters Armed with ‘Snark and a Pointed Critique’

September 13, 2011

Port officials and shipping industry leaders attending the annual American Association of Port Authorities convention woke up to find themselves the unwitting victims of a prank by environmental, faith, labor and community activists.