Truckers at Northwest ports settle--for now

By Patrick Burnson -- Logistics Management, 10/1/1999

All may be quiet for now on the Pacific Northwestern front, following the recently concluded independent truckers' strike. But issues that led to that strike are far from settled.

The truckers, who haul ocean containers between the ports and railheads, staged wildcat strikes against their employers this past summer, first at the Port of Vancouver, B.C., and later at Seattle and Tacoma, Wash. The job actions came just at the outset of the year's busiest shipping season. According to reports from the port authorities, the strikes stilled nearly 40 percent of the drayage workforce, slowing box traffic to a trickle.

At issue are the drivers' wages and the way port operations affect their income. Drivers say that congestion at terminal gates and the resulting long lines are hurting them financially because they are paid by the trip, not by the hour. Port and terminal managers have some sympathy for the drivers. Says Dan Westerlin, director of strategic marketing for the Port of Oakland, Calif., "Truckers in the north are reacting to gate congestion and the impact it is having on their bottom line. These people are paid on a per-trip basis, and if they are only making $75 a day, they'll have a hard time staying in business."

Vancouver is fully mobilized now, having negotiated a deal that requires employers to pay drivers by the hour and unclogs most marine terminal gates. Drivers at Seattle and Tacoma are asking for a similar deal. Other West Coast ports, meanwhile, are taking precautionary measures to prevent similar problems at their own facilities. The Port of Oakland, for example, is trying to avoid bottlenecks by keeping the yards open as much as possible and clear of equipment. Officials there are debating a strategy that would ally the port with a few selected owner-operators. Some port authorities feel that such a strategy, which would limit operating licenses to drivers who have demonstrated familiarity with terminals and their routines, will enhance service quality over time.

According to a source who requested anonymity, though, the drivers should be focusing less on port management and more on the lack of cooperation from port-related work forces. "Many of us in management are truly sympathetic to the plight of some of these guys, [who] are barely able [to earn] a living," the source says. "But the real source of their problems comes from workers at the other end of the pipeline. Longshoremen leave their jobs early, and terminal operators will take long lunches while leaving the gates shut. Drivers, meanwhile, just sit there and lose money."

Nonetheless, management continues to be the drivers' target. Says Gretchen Donart of Seattle Union Now, an AFL-CIO splinter group that is working to establish a drivers' union, "The pressure has to be put on the first point of contact--the ocean vessel operators."

Word from representatives of the U.S. drivers was that work stoppages at Seattle and Tacoma would resume if demands for higher wages were not met. "[P]ort truckers will reconvene and decide, based on how the trucking companies and ports are addressing the issues, whether to resume the strike against all, some, or none of the trucking companies," says a representative of Teamsters Local 174 in Seattle, which also is trying to unionize the owner-operators. The representative says that authorities had until the end of September to decide on what future action was "appropriate."