Teamsters seek to bar independent truckers from Oakland port

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has turned its political and financial pressure toward the Bay Area as part of a union goal to organize drayage drivers at the nation's ports.

The union staged a rally Tuesday at the Port of Oakland aimed at pressuring port officials to adopt a trucking plan that would eliminate independent owner-operators from servicing the port, California's third largest.

The rally, which attracted several hundred local union members, local drivers and members of the public, also attracted Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a key ally in the Teamsters?successful efforts to get an identical plan approved at the Port of Los Angeles late last year.

The $2.4 billion port re-regulation plan, which requires licensed motor carriers in Southern California to hire drayage drivers as per-hour employees, is to take affect Oct. 1. Like the Oakland port, independent owner-operators make up more than 80 percent of the Southern California drayage fleet.

The American Trucking Association, a vocal opponent of the labor restrictions in the Los Angeles truck plan, has said it will file a federal suit against the plan early next week over the plan's alleged violations of federal interstate commerce laws. Los Angeles neighbor port of Long Beach, while adopting a similar drayage re-regulation plan sans the Teamster labor restrictions, will also be named in the ATA suit.

The Southern California re-regulation plan, like that being proposed at the Oakland port, ties the labor restrictions to environmental efforts by the ports to cut drayage truck pollution.

The recent Southern California Teamsters effort, which has seen the union partner with numerous environmental and social justice groups, came after nearly a decade of traditional and failed drayage driver organizing efforts by the union in Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation's two busiest container ports.

Teamster President James Hoffa Jr. in mid-2007 presented the outline of the union's trucking plan to Villaraigosa, a former-union organizer who received sizable backing from labor organizations in his mayoral campaign. The drayage re-regulation plan adopted jointly by the two Southern California ports late last year retained much of the plan Hoffa originally presented to Villaraigosa.

On Tuesday, Villaraigosa joined Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums in addressing the Bay Area rally outside a hotel where the California Labor Federation is holding a two-day conference.

Dellums praised Villaraigosa's uts, courage and integrity, in pushing the Teamsters plan to eliminate the independent owner operators.

Telling attendees that is good for labor is good for America, Villaraigosa warned that el miss a great opportunity, if the Teamsters plan does not move from Los Angeles to other ports.

In March, Port of Oakland commissioners committed to reducing 85 percent of diesel emissions from port-generated sources by 2020. Oakland port officials are developing a drayage overhaul plan that would retrofit nearly 1,000 trucks with emission-capturing devices. While the port has yet to take up the issue of possible labor restrictions in the plan, commissioners are expected to vote next month on hiring a consultant to conduct a three-month study to assess the viability of imposing the employee-only model.

ATA, which represents more than 37,000 motor carriers nationwide, said it would also sue the Port of Oakland if port officials adopt a plan that violates interstate commerce laws.