A “Blue-Green”Alliance Organizes to Meet the Challenge of Global Climate Change and Port Pollution

By Martin J. Bennett

For more than three decades labor unions and environmental organizations have worked together to improve workplace health and safety, to establish environmental standards for clean air and water and to oppose “free trade” agreements that do not include protections for labor rights and the environment. This “blue-green” alliance is now focusing on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and the global climate crisis.

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, an organization of labor, environmental and civil rights groups including the Teamsters, Sierra Club, and Mexican American Political Association, recently announced a historic plan to cut all forms of air pollution from the ports by 45 percent, and to reduce diesel truck emissions by 80 percent over the next five years.

The two ports are the largest in North America and employ half a million workers. The ports are engines for the California economy and serve as a gateway for 40 percent of U.S. imports. The National Resource Defense Council reports that 5800 ships annually discharge their cargo and 40,000 truck-trips a day are needed to move containers from ships to trains and warehouses.

The emissions from the ports are the largest single fixed source of air pollution in the L.A. basin—the worst in the nation. The 16,000 short-haul trucks are the major contributor to port pollution: they burn diesel fuel that emits hazardous carcinogenic particulates and nitrogen and sulfide oxides.

According to the California Air Resources Board, diesel exhaust is responsible for 70 percent of the cancer risk in the state from toxic air contaminants. Some of the highest rates of lung cancer and respiratory illness are in communities near the ports like San Pedro, Wilmington, and West Long Beach. A USC study concluded that children's risk for asthma in port communities is twice the state average.

Economist Michael Belzer suggests that drivers like the port truckers work in “Sweatshops on Wheels.” The overwhelming majority of drivers are new immigrants, and most employed by hundreds of smaller trucking firms. These workers are misclassified as “independent contractors,” who do not receive Social Security, Medicare or workers’ compensation. The drivers face cancer rates ten times the acceptable OSHA standards.

Moreover, drivers must pay for their trucks, fuel, insurance, and fees. These “troqueros” average less than $12 an hour without benefits and work 50 hours a week to earn a poverty-level annual income of $29,000 a year after expenses. Most cannot afford costly repairs and upgrades to their aging vehicles.

“You are a slave to the trucks,” one driver told a reporter, and not surprisingly, each year turnover amongst drivers is more than 100 percent.

For over a year labor and environmentalists have organized port drivers and residents of nearby communities to pressure the port commissions to develop a comprehensive “Clean Trucks” program and to fully implement the ports’ “Clean Air Action Plan.” The new agreement, approved last month, mandates that the ports will spend $1.8 billion to scrap or retrofit all trucks with new “clean technology.”

Drivers will become employees of trucking firms that will bid on port freight-hauling contracts with strict environmental, equipment maintenance, and workplace standards.

The workers will have labor protections and will be able to organize a union to bargain for better pay and medical and retirement benefits, and improved health and safety. Port truckers will be paid by the hour—no longer by the load—and port contractors will own the trucks, providing incentives for increased efficiency due to less dockside waiting time and better truck maintenance.

Improved job quality and unionization of the drivers will lead to a decline in turnover, better trained workers, and enhanced safety and security at the ports.

The port agreement is a “win-win” for all. The drivers will gain a living wage, labor rights, and respect for their work; businesses will be provided a stable, skilled work force and increased productivity; port communities will experience decreased exposure to diesel pollution; and carbon emissions from the ports in Southern California will decline dramatically.

Most revealing, a new study by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy documents that the agreement will save $2.2 billion over five years for costs related to the health impacts of port pollution in the region.

Cargo volumes are expected to double by 2025 and more sustainable port expansion will be possible. The costs of clean up and modernization will be paid for by bond measures and fees from trucking firms and their shipper clients like Wal-Mart, Target, and Lowes, who will benefit the most from the expansion of the ports.

The coalition hopes to reproduce the model agreement at other ports nationwide, including the Port of Oakland, where a similar campaign to reduce emissions and overhaul port trucking has begun and will receive a boost by implementation of the agreements at the Los Angeles-Long Beach seaports.

The “greening of the ports” is a clear example of cooperation between labor and environmentalists to confront the challenge of global warming and to create good jobs. As Leo Gerard, President of the United Steel Workers, declared, “We are an environmental union and it’s not a case of jobs versus the environment. The science is clear. It’s either both or neither.”

Martin J. Bennett teaches American history at Santa Rosa Junior College; he serves as Co-Chair of the Living Wage Coalition of Sonoma County and is a board member of Sonoma County Conservation Action and the North Bay Labor Council.