Council OKs plan for port truckers

The City Council gave final approval Tuesday to a union-backed plan that would require all truck drivers who carry cargo through the Port of Los Angeles to be employed by a trucking company.

The plan, which is part of a larger initiative to clean the air by replacing as many as 17,000 older diesel trucks, would eliminate independent owner-operator trucking companies by 2012. Backers of the plan, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, argued that truck drivers would not be capable of maintaining cleaner-burning trucks unless they earn more money -- and have the ability to join labor unions.

“We are cleaning up the truck-driving industry, and we are going to begin to pay decent wages to the drivers,” said Councilwoman Janice Hahn, whose district includes the Los Angeles harbor.

The American Trucking Assn. already has promised to file a lawsuit to block the truck plan. Curtis Whalen, executive director of the association’s Intermodal Modal Carriers Conference, said his group also planned to sue the Port of Long Beach over its own, slightly different, clean truck initiative.

Whalen said his group would not try to stop the part of the plan that allows the ports to subsidize part of the cost of buying new cleaner-fuel trucks.