Labor/Environmentalist Alliance vs. Sellout Dem Establishment At Major US Port

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sun Feb 24, 2008 at 10:39

There's just one problem: It won't work.

Unlike the plan originally presented as far back as last April, this plan would preserve the existing highly exploitive labor system, in which so-called "independent owner-operators" are denied labor rights and receive an average take-home income of just $12 per hour--an income clearly insufficient to enable them to buy and properly maintain the new trucks that are crucial to the plan's success.

By taking this action--with just 3 days notice (three days of a three-day weekend)--the Port of Long Beach broke its partnership with the Port of Los Angeles, which is still expected to pass the original plan, which was modelled on a proposal form the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, a labor/environmental/public health/faith-based alliance that brought together major elements of the Democratic base (complete member list with links, here).  It is a local, Los Angeles-based coalition, but was created with major backing from the Teamsters and Change To Win.

Opposed to it is the $300 billion+ consumer products import industry--from the big box retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, the major shipping and transportation trade associations, and general business alliances like the Chambers of Commerce, on down to roughly a thousand small- to medium-sized trucking companies, most of whom treat their workers like sharecroppers in the segregtion-era South.

Guess which side the Long Beach political establishment took?

This is the same dynamic we see played out over and over again in Washington, but here it is happening much closer to where people live and (as a direct result of this powerful business coalition) die.  On the flip is the story I wrote for the paper I work for, Random Lengths News.

"Bizzaro World," is how one leading environmentalist, Jonathan Parfrey, head of the Green LA coalition, described it.  Every business person and group representative who testified praised the abruptly-changed Port of Long Beach [POLB] "Clean Trucks Program" [CTP] that was approved 5-0 on February 19, while every environmentalist and public health advocate criticized it.

"It will fail to protect workers and communities," testified Colleen Callahan, of the American Lung Association.

"You're not looking at us truck drivers," said Oscar Tirello, who has three kids with asthma and was one of several drivers in the Gateway Cities program who criticized it as "not working for me."  That program is the closest model to what POLB hastily approved.

Elina Green, of the Long Beach Coalition for Children With Asthma supplemented her health concerns with an oft-heard complaint about the process. "Many of us were left in the dark," Green said.  

Notice of the altered proposal came just three days before the vote-Friday before a three-day weekend.  The Port of Los Angeles was caught by surprise, having previously scheduled a joint board meeting to adopt a common approach.

Failures to mandate "best available technology" and to set a firm goal of at least 50% LNG and other clean fuels were widely-cited problems.  But by far the biggest concern was the decision to preserve the existing exploitative labor system, and scrap the proposal that operating concessions be limited employee-only firms, whose workers enjoy labor law protections. It was criticized not just morally-several priests and ministers objected-but pragmatically too, as its success would depend on substantial capital expenditures by so-called "independent owner-operators" who average just $12 per hour net, compared to an industry average of over $20, according to a report by economist John Husing, commissioned by the ports themselves last year.

While the plan was criticized by scores of truckers, environmentalists and public health advocates, it was also sharply criticized by the only economist to testify.  Former UCLA economist, Christopher Thornberg, of Beacon Economics, testified in place of his partner Jon Haveman, on their about-to-be-released report, commissioned by the Hewlett Foundation, which analyzes the original CTP, and finds that the now-abandoned concession model is crucial to its success. The issue was not "aggregation of labor," Thornberg explained, but "aggregation of capital" into a substantially smaller number of larger, more economically stable firms.

"In five years, you're going to end up exactly where you are today," Thornberg warned.

The worker-hostile move came one month after the port approved a container fee system designed to secure over $1.4 billion in taxpayer subsidies for infrastructure expansion needed only by the goods movement industry.

John Zerolnick, a policy analyst with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, cited as one of several contradictions the reliance on seven-year leases in a five year plan, with the distinct possibility that truckers would be saddled with two years of obligations on trucks they could not use.

In the end, a wounded harbor commission was reduced to attacking the environmentalists, stressing the need for swift action (after stalling since last April), and denying the obvious-that the partnership with the Port of LA had been ditched.  Scores of truckers left the room in disgust before the final vote, after Commission President Mario Cordero and Commissioner Doris Topsy-Elvord professed their deep concern for the truckers whose fate they were about to abandon.