Ocean Cargo: Port of Los Angeles will face legal battle over truckers

Patrick Burnson, Executive Editor -- Logistics Management, 5/19/2008

LOS ANGELES—As predicted in LM and elsewhere in the transportation and trade press, the Port of Los Angeles harbor commission wasted little time in voting to ban independent truck drivers by the end of 2013. And in open defiance of protests made by a variety of shipper groups prior to last Friday’s meeting, the decision was unanimous.

Shipper lobbying groups as diverse as the National Industrial Transportation League (NITL); The West Coast Waterfront Coalition; and the Agricultural Transportation Coalition (AgTC) have opposed such a move, but the litigious teeth of the American Trucking Associations will probably be the first bared.

“We will definitely be taking this case to court,” declared Curtis E. Whalen, executive director of the Intermodal Carriers Conference of the American Trucking Associations. shortly before the meeting. “The Port of LA hasn’t a legal leg to stand on.”

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, meanwhile, has yet to declare victory. Nor has it outlined a strategy to defend the port’s action. Under the proposed plan, 20 percent of the port’s drayage drivers must be employees. Then the requirement rises to 66 percent by 2010; 85 percent by the end of 2011; 95 percent by the end of 2012 and full compliance by the end of 2013.

This is not about clean air or the environment at all,” said Peter Friedmann, chief counsel for AgTC in Washington. “It is blatant power move put on by the Teamsters, and it will cost shippers still more money to implement.”

Shippers have a grace period of several months before that happens, however. The port’s so-called “Clean Trucks Program” is not scheduled to begin union October 1. The neighboring Port of Long Beach has opted for a more moderate position, mandating that independent truckers be allowed to work with union drivers as long as their vehicles are compliant with new environmental standards.

More than 80 percent of the current drayage workforce at both ports is composed of independent drivers. According to the American Association of Port Authorities, LA/Long Beach is by far the predominant ocean cargo gateway in all of North America.