One of the thorniest problems the Teamsters union faces in organizing container-port drivers is the drivers’ status as independent contractors.
Past attempts by unions to organize drivers in Los Angeles-Long Beach, the nation’s largest container port, have foundered because owner-operators are considered independent contractors, and not direct employees of the trucking companies they drive for.
A California Superior Court ruling last month said that two trucking companies in Los Angeles were correct in classifying the owner-operators who drove for them as independent contractors.
The court ruled that the trucking companies therefore did not have to make payments for social security, state disability and other benefits.
This decision could make it more difficult for the Teamsters to organize owner-operators nationwide because under U.S. antitrust law, independent contractors can not be organized by a labor union.
The Teamsters union, however, believes it is making progress on the independent contractor issue.
George Cashman, director of the Teamsters Port Division, said union lawyers believe they can present a convincing argument to the courts that owner-operators should be classified as direct employees.
“We believe it is possible to represent these drivers as employees of an entity. We’re pretty excited about this,” Cashman said. He would not elaborate. “We’re working with a list of options,” he said.
The Teamsters union traditionally has concentrated its trucking efforts on long-haul carriers. But the union’s recent activities in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast indicate a desire to return harbor haulers to the union’s jurisdiction.
Cashman, who has been a member of the Massachussetts Port Authority commission for the past six years, said the fact that Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa appointed him to head the union’s ports division indicates the Teamsters union is committed at the highest level to organizing harbor truck drivers.
“The drivers have been crying for someone to represent them for years,” Cashman said.
The Teamsters are sensitive to the fact that past organizing attempts among owner-operators have failed, said Ed Burke, coordinator of the union’s West Coast port division.
A failed effort by the Communications Workers of America to organize drivers in Los Angeles-Long Beach in the mid-1990s left the mostly Latino drivers suspicious of unions.
Burke said the Teamsters are proceeding methodically so they can avoid the mistakes made in previous organizing attempts. “It will take time,” he said.
While most trucking company executives oppose unionization of drivers, they acknowledge that drivers need higher pay.
The trucking companies are caught in the the middle: they can’t pass on higher costs to their steamship-line customers, but they have an increasingly difficult time keeping drivers.
Joe Nievez, president of Qwikway Trucking in Los Angeles and immediate past chairman of the California Trucking Association, said local newspapers are filled with advertisements from trucking companies offering bonuses and other incentives to attract qualified drivers during the current nationwide driver shortage.
“These guys are in the driver’s seat,” Nievez said. “They just don’t know it.”
