California Apparel News

More than 200 truckers tired of being classified as independent contractors rather than full-time employees walked off the job and have been picketing around port terminals, rail yards and customer warehouses.

The picketing started April 27 and continued through the week. They are picketing four truck companies: Pacific 9 Transportation, Intermodal Bridge Transport, Pacer Cartage and Harbor Rail Transport.

The trucking companies drop off and pick up cargo containers at the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. On April 29, pickets were walking with placards near the entrance of the International Transport Service terminal and the Pacific Container terminal at the Port of Long Beach.

“They are picketing trucks wherever those trucks go,” said Barbara Maynard, a spokesperson for the Teamsters, the union that is supporting the truckers in their effort to be reclassified as full-time employees. “This has been a game of cat and mouse. Sometimes the terminal operators tell the trucks to go away if we are picketing. And then when the picket lines go away, they are letting in the trucks.”

Other terminals are telling the trucks being picketed to come back another time to avoid any conflict. The ports’ longshore workers, who recently negotiated a new five-year contract, continue to work and are not honoring the picket lines.

Officials at the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles said the picketing was not disrupting cargo movements. “The picketers are supposed to be standing on the side of the street, and they are,” said Art Wong, a Port of Long Beach spokesperson. “The trucks continue to go in and out.”

Port of Los Angeles spokesman Phillip Sanfield said there has been minimal disruption. “Cargo has moved every day out of the eight container terminals,” he said.

Port observers noted that the four companies being picketed only represent 472 trucks out of the 13,700 truckers registered to serve the port.

But Maynard, who represents the truck drivers, said there are delays in getting cargo into the terminals. “Most certainly things have slowed down. We see very long lines [of trucks]. Because so many of the terminals have told these companies to take their business elsewhere, they are not allowed on the docks.”

Truckers picketed a larger number of trucking companies last November asking for the same thing—that they be hired as full-time employees who receive all the benefits given to full-time employees. The independent truckers are responsible for their own Social Security contributions and receive no workers’ compensation insurance, disability insurance or vacation pay.

Last year a federal court ruled that drivers from Shippers Transport Express were actually employees, which allows them to unionize and join the Teamsters.

On April 27, the Teamsters said they reached a “labor peace” agreement with Green Fleet Systems, which had been targeted before by picketers.