3 Unions Unite in Push to Organize Short-Haul Drivers at Nation’s Ports

A coalition of the toughest unions on the waterfront has launched an initiative to organize about 50,000 short-haul truck drivers at the nation’s ports, including nearly 10,000 working the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.

The campaign, which follows a decade of failed attempts, is slated to be announced today by the United Brotherhood of Teamsters, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the International Longshoremen’s Assn. at an AFL-CIO convention in Las Vegas. The three groups have sparred in the past, but have agreed “to support one another in efforts to organize the ports wall to wall,” said George Cashman, a Boston union leader who was appointed by Teamsters President James P. Hoffa to direct the port effort.

Previous efforts by other unions have been hampered by the drivers’ classification as independent owner-operators, rather than trucking company employees, which bars them from forming a union under federal labor laws. To overcome that, Cashman said, the Teamsters union has been talking with trucking firms that could act as employers of record. “We hope to build a coalition and put together a national agreement that will mirror the master freight agreement that Jimmy Hoffa put together decades ago,” he said.

The Teamsters began to seriously court port drivers about two years ago. At the time, spiking diesel prices created a sense of panic among many drivers, who are paid by the trip and must cover all fuel and other expenses. When prices dropped, the sense of urgency dissipated.

Port trucking once provided well-paid union jobs, but that began to change after the trucking industry was deregulated in 1979. Shipping companies began to hire nonunion drivers to reduce costs, then started contracting the work out to independent owner-operators, so-called because they own their own trucks.

There have been at least three major efforts by unions to tap into the frustration of port drivers at Long Beach-Los Angeles, including by the Communications Workers of America, which led to two unsuccessful strikes in the last decade. As a result, some drivers said they are cynical of the latest effort, and are waiting to see what happens.