Cleaner Ports = Middle-Class Green Job Growth

by: Drum Major Institute

Thu Jan 22, 2009 at 11:37


With Obama urging Congress to pass an economic stimulus quickly, political leaders should waste no time pointing to a smart, stable source of green job growth: port trucking. If we reverse years of dangerous deregulation, thousands of new low-paying jobs could quickly become sustainable middle-class jobs. This is especially true in New York.

Few New Yorkers are aware of just how critical port trucking is to their city, state and region. Nearly $15 billion in goods moved through New York's ports by truck and rail last year, according to the Port Authority. That figure dovetails with research from the Pratt Center for Community Development showing persistent strength in urban manufacturing and transport of goods, with specialized firms employing many thousands of New Yorkers, even in the midst of this terrible downturn.

These firms pay their workers $49,000 on average. Yet approximately 7,000 truck drivers in and around New York's ports earn on average $28,000 because of trucking deregulation that began in the 1980s, according to a new study by the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.
Drum Major Institute :: Cleaner Ports = Middle-Class Green Job Growth

That deregulation enabled bosses to dispatch cargo through so-called independent contractors. Treating these drivers as small businessmen rather than employees has prohibited the drivers from joining unions - and essentially enabled the companies to cheat on payroll taxes.

A majority of these port truckers are recent immigrants with no negotiating power or workplace rights. Their lives are dictated by ocean shipping lines and trucking companies trying to get maximum productivity at minimal expense. These drivers have to pay for their own truck maintenance, fuel, road taxes, tire insurance and tolls. They are covered neither by workers' compensation nor by any labor legislation that protects fair wages, hours, occupational safety or health.

They're not the only victims of the system. The Rutgers study reveals how the structure of the trucking industry passes off huge labor and environmental costs to the rest of us. Ordinary citizens are paying for the environmental effects of diesel emissions, for the health care of drivers and their families who can't afford insurance and for the congestion on freight routes that often run through residential neighborhoods.

Port truck drivers operating with such low profit margins are most likely to use the least expensive trucks available, older and far more polluting than newer, cleaner trucks. The cheapest trucks emit the most dangerous fumes in neighborhoods closest to the ports, making the air increasingly toxic and causing severe spikes in asthma rates.

The trucking industry should no longer be allowed to get away with forcing truck drivers and taxpayers to shoulder this burden. So we need new regulations that would require the trucking industry to absorb the total labor and environmental costs of doing business in our cities, states, and regions.

West Coast ports are already doing this. In Los Angeles, the largest port city in the nation, a new Clean Trucks Program, recently endorsed by President Obama, mandates that all port truck drivers are treated as full employees, enabling them to bargain collectively for fair wages and benefits. It also compels trucking companies and their giant shipping clients like Wal-Mart, Target and Nike to take responsibility for cleaner truck technology.

When they earn higher wages and benefits, port truck drivers can contribute more to their local economies while performing the necessary maintenance on their vehicles to keep their surrounding communities healthy and free of hazardous emissions.

Hard as it is to imagine these days, there can still be good economic news- if policy makers do the right thing.

An alternate version of this piece, co-authored with Congressman Jerrold Nadler, appears in The New York Daily News.

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Cleaner Ports = Middle-Class Green Job Growth | 8 comments
This is a good program. (0.00 / 0)
Thanks for publicizing it.
I've Been Reporting On This For Years (4.00 / 1)
I've been reporting about port pollution and race and class--primarily at the Port of LA (POLA)--since I first started working at Random Lengths News in 2002.  The organizing drive that lead to the adoption of POLA's Clean Trucks Program (CTP) began in the fall of 2006.

This is what's referred to here:

West Coast ports are already doing this. In Los Angeles, the largest port city in the nation, a new Clean Trucks Program, recently endorsed by President Obama, mandates that all port truck drivers are treated as full employees, enabling them to bargain collectively for fair wages and benefits. It also compels trucking companies and their giant shipping clients like Wal-Mart, Target and Nike to take responsibility for cleaner truck technology.

However, it should be noted that the Bush Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) is doing everything it can to prevent the plan from going into effect, and I'm currently tracking two main court proceedings, one between the FMC and ports of LA and Long Beach, and another in which the Natural Resources Defense Council is suing the FMC for failing to follow federal environmental law in making its rulings against the two ports.

It would be nice to see Obama take swift action to end this obstructionism.  

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

whoops (0.00 / 0)
I said MARAD almost killed it, you're correct the FMC is the relative agency.  
[ Parent ]
I work in the Maritime industry and this is a huge issue. (0.00 / 0)
Actually the plan itself has caused some enviornmental gains whether or not it actually succeeds. The major importers are so afraid of higher costs due to unionization that they formed a partnership that is funding new green trucks for port drayage drivers in a private effort to defuse the issue. For Wal-Mart and their ilk the cost of green trucks is far the lesser evil when compared to the return of unionized truckers.

I don't think this story really conveyed how fucking nasty short haul port drayage trucks are. The contractors have to maintain their own trucks from their own pocket. As a result the air pollution controls don't work and the things just gush black particulate filled smoke. LA/LB neighborhoods near the ports have asthma rates far above the national average and signficantly higher than the LA/LB area overall.

MARAD almost killed this initiative beforee Bush left, and it may yet get killed in the courts, (it my opinion that is the likely final outcome.) But we need to examine these issues as a country. Greener trucks, along with wonkish things like cold iron ships and the repeal of the Jones act would be an air quality windfall for all coastal residents.  

I Disagree Re The Outcome (0.00 / 0)
Particularly if Obama acts swiftly.  The FMC (not MARAD, as you acknowledge above) is acting far outside the norms of responsible regulatory process, with an understaffed board (two vacancies on a 5-person board) that has one dissenter who has consistently blasted the two-person majority in scathing dissents.

But even on the merits, FMC's case is a mess.  As I wrote in an article about the case in DC District Court:

Beyond that, the argument from FMC and Pearson [FMC's economist] appeared to involve at least three fundamental contradictions.  First, as noted by Harvard economist Joseph P. Kalt, in a declaration supporting POLA [the Port of LA], FMC is charging that the two ports are colluding to restrict competition, but Pearson's argument does not involve the market they are in--providing port services.

"Reduced competition and increased prices in port trucking (drayage) services would reduce demand for what POLA and POLB [the Port of Long Beach] sell. This is not in their economic interests.," Kalt stated.  "POLA's and POLB's interests lie in more, not less, competition in the port trucking (drayage) services market."

Second, Pearson argued that POLA and POLB had colluded together, despite significant differences in their plans-above all, the employee mandate required by POLA-which would normally indicate a lack of coordination.  But his argument that the "plan" introduced anti-competitive costs used a baseline plan in which both ports used POLB's plan.

As a result, BCG [Boston Consulting Group] economist Simon Goodall noted in a declaration supporting POLA, "the 'net cost' he [Pearson] measures is actually the cost not of an 'agreement,' but of the absence of an agreement, whereby the two Ports are acting differently."

Third, the argument that the truck drayage market would be anti-competitive, because it will be too concentrated, with too few companies directly contradicted his argument that truck utilization efficiencies cited by Beacon and BCG could not be realized because the market was too fragmented, with too many companies.

"[T]he very high rate of matching, on which the BCG high-end estimate depends, is an unwarranted assumption," Pearson argued. "Moreover, absent considerable consolidation of the drayage industry, even the low estimate of 25.8 percent matching is not achievable."

[Jon] Haveman [author of another economic analysis of port trucking] pointedly disagreed, saying, "It's precisely the concentrations that will result, especially from the Port of LA plan, that will drive them all to seek out inefficiencies to lower costs."

There are many more problems with FMC's case as well.  (The concentration argument, for example, revolves around a market that still has hundreds of participants.  It would be laughed out of court in an anti-trust context.  This is at least an order of magnitude too many participants to even begin taking it seriously.) But these are basic logical contradictions at the heart of their case, and I just can't imagine the ports' lawyers failing to pound the hell out of them.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Well LA/LB isn't just any other port. (0.00 / 0)
The throughput from Oakland/SeaTac/San Diego/any other west coast port I'm missing could never pick up the slack if LA/LB put a major restriction on trade. Even taking into account Lazaro Cardenas, Vancouver, Prince Rupert, and canal traffic a large large portion of US trade HAS to come through LA/LB. They're at least head oligarchs of the US logistics system. I'm not a monopoly expert but you can't pretend LA/LB is just another player in the market.

As for the FMC, they're so starved for funding it doesn't surprise me they've got issues with their case, especially if they were ordered to "make it work" by Bush. But given the conservative nature of the Federal bench these days I'm not certain they don't stand a very good shot. The federal courts have erred on the side of federal control of interstate commerce for years.

Anyways I hope you're right, but I'm not as optimistic.  

[ Parent ]
Missing The Point (0.00 / 0)
The costs at LA/LB are going to go up, because decades of externalizing costs into the lungs of nearby residents are coming to an end.  These costs run at least $5 - $8 Billion a year.  The transportation industry is only being asked to pick up a fraction of that.  The costs here are worst, because of volume plus weather & geography, but there are similar costs everywhere, and there needs to be a global greening of goods movement around the world.  So the costs we're talking about here are going to mirrored elsewhere as well, though not necessarily at the same levels.

What's at issue in this case is an argument about costs in addition to that, and that's where FMC's case become incoherent.  Now, it's true that the increased costs from all sources will only minimally displace troughput to other ports on a percentage basis, but nonetheless, that is an impact on the ports own revenue, and it is the result of their policy.  They are taking a hit for doing the right thing.

In contrast, there is no evidence that concession system itself is responsible for increasing rates due to reduced competition. The rates are increasing, certainly, but reduced competition is not the reason, contrary to what FMC alleges.  In fact, by reducing the number of firms, and concentrating truck ownership, the concession systems make it much more possible to match loads and increase efficiency, which helps to additionally reduce pollution, and helps pay for the cost of new trucks by increasing the ROI, as they can make more paying trips in less time.

The judge they're in front of is a GOP appointee, but doesn't appear to be either a tool or a fool.  Of course one can never tell anything for certain from the questions asked from the bench during oral arguments, but so far he seems to be fairly solid.  The mere fact that he didn't let FMC stampede him into taking swift action to shut the ports down is a good sign as well.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
can you post MEDIAN pay instead? average is crap. (0.00 / 0)
If I hire 9 people at 10 bucks an hour, and pay myself $100 an hour, I could run around and claim how my average pay is $19 bucks an hour!
I see this average software worker figure out here in seattle all the time - it is complete bullshit. they take the people who started early at Microsoft and Amazon who've hit 7 and 8 figure jackpots, and add in the zillions make 15 bucks an hour, and, viola ... the average software worker makes over a 100 grand a year! yeah, whatever.

rmm.  

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way

Cleaner Ports = Middle-Class Green Job Growth | 8 comments
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