Independent Truckers, Union Form a Convoy

Gray-haired and gravel-voiced, Emilio Coronado is a veteran of the simmering tensions that have sparked one strike after another by independent truckers at the sprawling Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex.

Coronado was there with his fellow drivers in 1988 when a 2 1/2-week walkout against the trucking companies turned violent and collapsed. And he was part of the loosely organized group of mainly Latino immigrant truckers that struck for 10 days in 1993 before caving in and returning to work.

Now Coronado, 57, is taking a chance on another high-stakes but long-shot labor campaign. He is one of thousands of drivers who have snarled port operations for two weeks by refusing to haul cargo for nonunion employers and have instead cast their lot with an entrepreneur struggling to get a unionized trucking firm rolling.

This latest rebellion, if it overcomes increasingly tough odds, would write a new page in American labor history. Cultivated patiently over the last 19 months by the Communications Workers of America, it would bring the union as many as 6,500 new members--a giant victory for a private-sector organizing drive in this era of weak organized labor.

The effort is also notable for the roadblocks it has overcome. The overwhelmingly immigrant Latino drivers hooked up with the CWA only after being turned away by other unions, including the Teamsters. What’s more, the drivers put their trust in Anglo labor leaders who know little Spanish beyond the popular rallying cry “Si, se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”).

Still, a key legal hurdle complicates the fight ahead. Until they can prove they are employees and not independent contractors, as they generally are classified by the trucking companies, they don’t even have the right to unionize under U.S. labor law.

“This isn’t traditional union organizing by any measure,” said Mark Bixler, CWA Local 9400’s organizing director. “This is building a movement with the people.”

The union trucking firm trying to get started, the Transport Maritime Assn., would quickly get around the independent contractor issue by hiring the drivers and turning them into employees. The big problem: The TMA is a long-shot venture itself and could flop.

Nevertheless, union leaders say they will penetrate the industry one way or another--organizing drivers company by company at the more than 200 port trucking firms if that’s what it takes.

The long-running labor strife, the drivers and union say, is born of economic desperation. Deregulation of the trucking industry and an influx of immigrants from Latin America in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing in an army of drivers willing to work cheaply, drastically reduced the workers’ earnings.

Drivers, paid by the job rather than by the hour, are squeezed further by a port system that routinely leaves them waiting as long as four hours to pick up their cargo. The drivers and CWA officials also accuse some of the trucking companies of a batch of regulatory violations and financial improprieties. One of the chief complaints is that the firms allegedly bilk drivers by taking hefty vehicle insurance deductions from their checks for nonexistent insurance coverage.

For his part, Coronado said his last year was miserable financially. He said he grossed $22,000 but, after business expenses, earned only about $5,000. “There’s no hope for the future if we continue like that,” he said.

Meanwhile, he’s four months late on the rent for the home he and his wife and their five children share in South-Central Los Angeles. “Our kids are suffering,” he said. “Used shoes. Used clothes.”

Although drivers say conditions are worse than ever now, efforts to re-unionize the port drivers have popped up sporadically since the mid-1980s. First the Teamsters, who were entrenched at the port before the trucking industry was deregulated in 1979, failed in an effort to reestablish themselves there.

A drivers association formed and folded. Later came the unsuccessful 1988 and 1993 strikes that Coronado joined.

In 1994, another group was established, the Latin American Truckers Assn. It soon floundered and sought to link up with an established union. After the Teamsters and other unions turned them away, the truckers wound up talking to the CWA.

Bixler, Local 9400’s organizing director, spoke at an early gathering of the truckers and wasn’t impressed. The meeting, he said, “was chaotic. People were coming and going. I couldn’t figure out who was in charge.”

But slowly, the ties between the truckers and the CWA--a diversified union that represents everyone from telephone operators to prison guards--developed. CWA organizers say attendance at monthly, then weekly, membership meetings climbed from 10 or 15 people to mob scenes of several thousand.

The organizing drive leaped forward late last year when, CWA officials say, they were approached by the former insurance agent behind the TMA, Donald L. Allen. The union embraced his plan for a unionized trucking firm, word spread quickly among harbor truckers, and by May 1, thousands of drivers were winding their way to a dusty lot in Fontana to have their rigs appraised by Allen’s firm.

By Friday, business at the port was picking up as drivers defected. There were even lines forming at some terminals. Only scattered picketers gathered outside some gates, their activity restrained by a court order sought by the terminal operators earlier this week.

One possible wild card that could swing the fight back in the union’s favor: enlisting the support of the powerful International Longshoremen and Warehousemen Union, which has used its muscle in the past to shut down the ports. The CWA was in touch with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor on Friday to seek its sanction for such a move. Some union observers were mystified over why a plan to bring in the longshoremen wasn’t worked out earlier.

On the other hand, Friday also brought a fresh reminder of how difficult it could be if the Transport Maritime Assn. flops and the CWA needs to organize workers company by company. The nine ballots from a union representation election at one small firm, the first in a series of votes scheduled at a cluster of companies, were impounded by the National Labor Relations Board. The agency acted after the union accused the firm of trying to buy employees’ votes.

Yet even as the odds of a big victory in the short run seemed to be dimming, the morale of many of the drivers remained high. The setbacks in both previous years and in recent days, Coronado said, were like “falling down in the first round” of a boxing match. “It’s a 15-round fight.”