Vol. 77/No. 3      January 28, 2013

In a 54-0 vote Dec. 30, port truckers, members of Teamsters Local 848, ratified an agreement with Toll Group, an Australia-based shipping and warehousing company that handles brand-name fashion imports at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.

Contract provisions include: a more than $6 increase in hourly wages plus 50 cents an hour yearly raise during the three-year contract; overtime pay after 40 hours (trucking companies are exempt from U.S. overtime law and an average workweek is about 60 hours); lower health care costs with no change in coverage; paid holidays, sick days, personal days and vacation time; and enrollment in the Teamsters Western Conference Pension Trust Fund. The provisions go into effect immediately.

“To me, it’s not about the money, it’s about respect,” said Roger Ruiz, a driver with three years at Toll and over 30 years’ trucking.

The union drive here was spurred in part by poor working conditions in the yard—portable toilets instead of bathrooms, no separate toilets for women, no place to eat lunch, and no water to wash up. “Those days are over, now and forever, because we wouldn’t give up—we fought for our rights,” Ruiz said.

According to Teamsters Local 848, the last new contract by port truckers in the U.S. was won in the late 1980s. With the deregulation of the trucking industry that decade, a majority of trucking companies classified their employees as contractors or owner-operators as a way to lower their labor costs and get workers to bear the burden of paying for fuel, repairs and wait time. In addition, the bosses say these workers are not entitled to union membership.

Most of the drivers at the port here are also labeled “independent” operators. But at Toll Group drivers are hired by the company directly. “Our victory is historic,” said Toll driver Luis Alay. “It will inspire other drivers to go union, and it opens the door for them to do so.”

“When we first initiated the fight two years ago we were two or three people, but we made connections with each other and little by little we built a union,” said Remberto Martinez, a Toll driver and long-time port trucker. “With every fight that is a win, there are also losses. The employer can be counted on to do their part—to divide and repress the workers, to make you worry, ‘if I do this will I still be able to feed my family.’ But you win when you make each fight your own.”

The union drive reached out and won support from the Transport Workers Union of Australia, which represents 12,000 Toll Group workers there. Last March, four Australian TWU members visited Los Angeles on a fact-finding and solidarity trip.

Teamster delegations also went to Australia in October 2011 and again in 2012 to protest together with the TWU at the annual stockholders’ meeting of Toll Group in Melbourne.

“All Toll workers, no matter where they are in the world or what their accent is, should have the same workplace standards and conditions,” said Sydney-based Toll Group worker Steve Newton, in an article posted to the TWU Australia website.

“Every trucker here in Australia is delighted that our brothers and sisters in Los Angeles will finally have a fair go,” Newton said.
 
 
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