City Council Motion Advances to End “Modern Day Sharecropping”
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
After a decade of sustained struggle, capped off by 15 strikes in the past four years, port truckers might finally get the full support of the City of Los Angeles in their fight against modern-day sharecropping.
“I’m appalled; I’m disturbed by these allegations and so the residents of this great city should also be appalled and disturbed,” said Councilman Joe Buscaino on Nov. 28 after the conclusion of public testimony about exploitation of port truckers and warehouse workers. “It’s not acceptable for companies to be profiting from the use of public property by exploiting human beings…. We’re going to do all we can to address those concerns because that’s not the City of Angels that we represent.”
“This is modern day sharecropping,” said Councilman Mike Bonin. “It is incumbent on us to do whatever we can to try to fix this.”
The discussion occurred during a San Pedro field hearing of the Trade, Travel and Tourism Committee at the Port of Los Angeles, where the committee proceeded to approve a motion to ensure compliance with labor and employment laws at the port. The policy was introduced by Councilmen Buscaino and Bob Blumenfield on Oct. 13. It’s expected to go the full council in two weeks.
Testimony began with trucker Rene Flores, who was fired after telling his story to USA Today as part of an article that finally brought national press attention truckers’ struggles earlier this year.
“Thank God after all this I can still tell my story,” he said. “There are plenty who are no longer here to tell their story…. A lot of us don’t have enough to buy one present for our kids.”
Written testimony from the law firm of Bush and Gottlieb explained the financial situation faced by Flores and thousands of others. After the Clean Truck Program forced the purchase of a whole new truck fleet, they explained, “Nearly every employer passed onto drivers every single operating expense it could, to the point that some drivers would put in full weeks at work and receive paychecks for a few cents or even end up in debt, owing the employer money because of these unlawful deductions. Some companies allegedly even pocketed subsidy money they received.”
“After 6 days of work can you imagine telling my wife I don’t have one peso from my salary?” Flores said, describing one such situation.
Then his son asked: “Dad, can you take me to the movies?”
“How can I tell my son that the company exploited me and I don’t take money home?” he recalled in anguish.
Flores was followed by Dwayne Wilson, a California Cartage Co. Inc. forklift operator, who described a daily hiring system run through a temp agency; it was reminiscent of the longshore system prior to the 1934 strike and the founding of the ILWU.
“Every morning we, the temp workers, go to the warehouse and hope that we get picked to go in,” Wilson said. “There’s no clear system of how it works. There is no list based on seniority.”
Also like the pre-ILWU waterfront, workers are pitted against one another.
“The company does this to keep black and Latino workers divided to break us as human beings, but we workers have been coming together to change this,” Wilson said. “At the end of the day, nobody wins. We all work inhumane workloads, moving up to 450 boxes per hour by hand, working in polluted environments with high temperatures [more than] 115 degrees, with little ventilation. We are all constantly told that if we complain about our work conditions, we will be replaced.”
Port officials followed the workers’ testimony with explanations of how and why they had not been able to do anything. Then came public comment, which revealed a broad show of support from fellow workers, labor leaders, clergymen, and activist allies—roughly 30 in all. The support was particularly noteworthy, because the meeting was called with just one day of notice.
“We had very little notice,” Barbara Maynard of Justice for Port Drivers told Random Lengths News “It’s been quite a scramble but very exciting!”
Truckers and warehouse workers covered a wide range of topics, from personal experiences of hardship, struggling and intimidation to broadly-conceived principles and goals. But their voices only tell a fraction of the stories, said Guillermina Velasquez, a trucker for 14 years.
“Most of my coworkers are afraid to say they are not happy with the working conditions they have,” she said.
“Why are these lawbreaking companies allowed to have the privilege to do business at our ports?” trucker Daniel Seko Uiana asked. “Only those companies following the law and treating their workers fairly should be rewarded and not these lawbreaking companies abusing their workers.”
“Many of the drivers and warehouse workers have attempted to step forward and address this issue on their own,” said Rusty Hicks, executive secretary-treasurer for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “Thousand[s of] wage claims, 15 strikes over four years, 3,500 workers involved in lawsuits, and yet the result was still the same. We have a port, a port environment, that is … a cash cow … and yet the city has yet to step forward and do the right thing to find a way to do right by these workers.”
His point was echoed by Hector De Haro, a lawyer with Bush Gottlieb, which has represented individual truckers as well as the Teamsters Union for five years.
“Even though these workers have been having success in every forum that they go into, those forums are insufficient,” De Haro said. “They really need the port and the city to step up.”
Individual suffering [makes] immediate public impact, warned Alice Berliner, coordinator of the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety & Health.
“Workers are experiencing strokes and heart attacks,” she said “It’s not only a health and safety issue, concern for the workers. It’s also public health and safety issue for the public.”
But perhaps the most powerful testimony came from clergy of different faiths.
“We are here to light a fire and say what we got to uncover the injustices that are taking place here,” said Rev. William Smart, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Council of Los Angeles. “Fifty years ago, Dr. King was fighting for the same stuff that’s down here at the ports of Los Angeles today.”
“What is at issue is the morality of the city of Los Angeles,” SCLC Vice-chairman Rev. William Monroe Campbell said. “You have to find a way and make a way to make things right, for what is happening to these workers is totally immoral.”
“These conditions are what creates places like Skid Row,” said Rev. Stephen Jn-Marie, of the Skid Row Church Without Walls. “We’re not just talking about working conditions, we’re talking about the way that workers are treated. We know the city is in a homeless crisis. Where do you think it comes from? It comes from situations like these.”
“If we didn’t put pressure on systems that are broken,” said Rabbi Jonathan Klein, “We would’ve never gotten the vote for women; we would’ve never been able to move the right to marriage for all. There’s pressure that we need to put on the system and that’s what you two gentlemen can help us do.”
One specific proposal for a more aggressive approach came from Andrew Mandujano, with the Long Beach chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. He urged the city council to “work with state representatives to adopt a law like the [2014] New York Commercial Goods Transportation Industry Fair Play Act, which sets the assumption that the worker is an employee, puts responsibility on the employer to prove otherwise and sets criteria for what is an independent contract.”
“This is not an easy fix,” Bonin said, primarily because of a 2011 Ninth Circuit Court ruling which blocked the Port of Los Angeles from directly requiring port truckers to be employees. “The problem clearly is the law, but I also think part of the problem is the way we are perceiving the law. There’s more than one way to go at this. Al Capone didn’t get nailed for his big offenses. Al Capone got nailed for tax evasion.”
So they need to push harder and think creatively.
“If there was someone who had a lease here at the port. who it was repeatedly discovered was running a prostitution ring out of that port property, or was cooking crystal meth repeatedly on that port property, I’m sure that we would find a way to kick them off the port,” Bonin said.
What’s more, he said, echoing the point made by Klein, the city shouldn’t be afraid to try something just because they were told it couldn’t be done. He cited a series of past city actions—such as living wage for the Century Boulevard hotels, and the higher minimum wage for large hotels. “We were told you can’t do this, the court won’t uphold it. We did it. It stayed in place,” he said. He also pointed to example of marriage equality for same-sex couples. Some were afraid that a ruling against it would set back progress for a generation, but “We won and I was able to get married here in San Pedro.”
He also said:
“I’d like to see us look at getting some state legislation that gets more clarity,” such as the New York law highlighted by Mandujano.
Summing his response to all they had heard, Buscaino said:
“We’re going to do all we can to address those concerns because that’s not the city of angels that we represent.”