Clogged California ports face new labor risk from trucking
By Carlos Barria and Lisa Baertlein
OAKLAND (Reuters) -Truck drivers choked visitors on the Oakland, California, seaport on Monday protesting a state legislation that makes it tougher for impartial contractors to move items and will restrict labor on the state’s already clogged seaports, threatening to worsen the nation’s pandemic-fueled provide chain jams.
California’s ports deal with about 40% of container items that enter america. Trucking disruptions come at a time when unions and West Coast port employers are additionally negotiating a high-stakes labor contract.
The legislation, referred to as AB5, or the “gig employee” legislation, units more durable requirements for classifying staff as impartial contractors. Impartial truckers who now function below the authority and insurance coverage of corporations that rent them for jobs can be shouldered with the hefty prices and purple tape of taking that on when the legislation is enacted.
“They wish to eradicate us,” mentioned impartial driver Douglas Urtado, who joined Monday’s protest the Port of Oakland within the San Francisco Bay Space.
Wayne Feng, sporting a “No on AB5” T-shirt, informed Reuters the legislation can be so financially draining that drivers “aren’t making something.”
Authorized challenges stored AB5 from going into impact in 2020, however the U.S. Supreme Courtroom final month denied a California Trucking Affiliation petition claiming the legislation is blocked by federal laws. Specialists say an injunction that put the legislation on maintain might quickly be lifted.
Greater than 100 drivers and small trucking firm operators against the legislation swarmed two terminal gates within the Port of Oakland, slowing truck entry to a trickle. The motion got here after port truckers in Los Angeles picketed gates and snarled roadways on the nation’s busiest seaport advanced final week.
Enterprise proprietor Josue Mendez, 29, mentioned AB5 would devastate his port trucking agency, which depends on 10 impartial drivers to maneuver all the things from medical gear to almonds.
“I can now not rent them” and be in compliance with AB5, mentioned Mendez.
Backers of AB5, which embody the Teamsters union that after dominated trucking, say it would crack down on labor abuses by pushing homeowners to rent drivers as workers and supply staff’ compensation insurance coverage and different advantages.
Trade teams representing roughly 20,000 Los Angeles and Oakland port truckers, together with the Proprietor-Operator Impartial Drivers Affiliation, made an unsuccessful bid to persuade California Governor Gavin Newsom to delay enforcement of the legislation.
“Now that the federal courts have rejected the trucking business’s appeals, it is time to transfer ahead,” Dee Dee Myers, director of the Governor’s Workplace of Enterprise and Financial Improvement, mentioned in a press release.
California’s port trucking work practices hint again to the Nineteen Eighties, when america deregulated trucking. That reworked the enterprise from one dominated by giant, unionized corporations to the present mannequin during which most corporations depend on impartial drivers, a lot of whom are current immigrants.
Port driver pay is now one-half to two-thirds lower than what it was earlier than deregulation, in keeping with an estimate from Wayne State College economics professor Michael Belzer. It’s tough to derive correct knowledge on compensation as a result of authorities knowledge, notably on hours labored, is incomplete, he mentioned.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Modifying by Leslie Adler and Stephen Coates)
