Teamsters continue pickets at LA/Long Beach

Truck drivers continued picketing container terminals at the Ports of LA /Long Beach Wednesday slowing truck traffic at some terminals. A Teamster representative told AJOT that while progress obtaining employee status for owner operator harbor truck drivers was slow, progress was being made. He said: “Ocean carriers could do a lot to help drivers by insisting the shippers and trucking companies employ drivers with a stake in the company’s future rather than an owner operator who has no job security.” The Teamster representative noted that when the union began the campaign to support truck drivers becoming employees rather than owner operators there were only two companies serving the LA/Long Beach ports who employed drivers, “Today, there are 36 companies who employ their drivers out of 700 companies…so we still have a long way to go,” he noted. A 24-year-old warehouseman who recently moved to Long Beach to care for his mother and works for a local harbor trucking company said. “I think the picketing is having an effect. We are slowing productivity and sending a message to carriers and trucking companies that we aren’t giving up until everybody is an employee and everybody is treated with respect.”IMG_1403.jpeg