HONG KONG: Long-simmering labor tensions between Southern California port truckers and shipping companies they accuse of wage theft escalated on Tuesday as a group of drivers demanded recognition as full-fledged employees and petitioned to join the Teamsters union.
The action, according to the Teamsters, was taken by at least 50 drivers who work for New Jersey-based Intermodal Bridge Transport (IBT) hauling freight to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest cargo hub in America.
Teamsters officials said it marked an incremental but unprecedented effort in which workers treated by management as contractors had for the first time mustered a majority of their ranks to simultaneously seek employee status and union representation.
James Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, marked the occasion by appearing with a phalanx of union executives and picketers for a waterfront rally outside a marine terminal in Long Beach.
“You have the support of the 1.4 million Teamster members,” he said, surrounded by union activists carrying signs that read: “Wage theft stops here” and “We are all employees”.
Management rebuffed the drivers’ demands, prompting petitioning workers – a majority of the company’s 80-plus labor force in Los Angeles – to go on strike, the union said. Officials at IBT, a division of Chinese global shipping giant COSCO, were not immediately available for comment.
The IBT truckers joined scores of other drivers already picketing two other port-based trucking companies – Pacific 9 Transportation and XPO Logistics – likewise targeted by the Teamsters.
Although the striking drivers account for just a fraction of 13,600 tractor-trailer rigs registered to serve the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the dispute has implications for hundreds of companies and thousands of workers in Southern California.
