{"id":229,"date":"2006-10-19T12:50:48","date_gmt":"2006-10-19T12:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opendna.com\/uncategorized\/2006\/229"},"modified":"2022-11-08T11:32:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T11:32:54","slug":"governor-vetos-polbla-truckers-right-to-unionize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/19\/governor-vetos-polbla-truckers-right-to-unionize\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor Vetos POLB\/LA Trucker\u2019s Right to Unionize"},"content":{"rendered":"

At YearlyKos I got the opportunity to ask some Teamsters<\/a> reps about the the un-organized drayage operations that serve the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles (POLB\/LA). As the<\/em> choke point for imports into the United States, it seemed like a logical place to get leverage for other organizing efforts. I was told that the Teamsters basically got kicked out of the ports when the trucking industry was deregulated and hiring owner-operators became the standard MO for the industry. The Teamsters ominously said that they were already laying to ground work to reorganize drayage drivers and “we’ll be back”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The following article is about Governor Schwarzenegger’s veto of a bill that would have granted collective bargaining rights to drayage drivers, for the second year in a row. While I’m sure the governor would deny there’s any connection, it’s interesting to note that transporation companies are reliable Republican contributors<\/a>. Trucking PACs gave 80 percent to Republicans in 2006, the top 20 contributors consistently give over 70% of their contributions to the GOP.<\/p>\n

The eTrucking article<\/a> on the subject quotes extensively from Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association<\/a>. The OOIDA cites initiatives like privatizing highways, building toll roads, allowing Mexican truckers<\/a> to haul load deep into the American interior and building a mind-blowingly massive NAFTA<\/a> super<\/a>–highway<\/a> as key issues that threaten the American trucker. Ironically, these are all<\/u> Republican-backed initiatives. I won’t tell Mr. Spencer to take his own advice, but he did say “If truckers reject lawmakers who voted in favor of the [Indiana toll road<\/a>] lease, that sends a message around the country…” Language on the OOIDA website suggests a future defection from the Republican fold:<\/p>\n

[W]hen it comes to politics, the greatest advantage that large trucking corporations, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) and other political opponents have had over small-business truckers and professional drivers is the amount of money they contribute to political campaigns. They are well-funded and have agendas that are often counter to the interests of OOIDA members. (OOIDA-PAC<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At YearlyKos I got the opportunity to ask some Teamsters reps about the the un-organized drayage operations that serve the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles (POLB\/LA). As the choke point for imports into the United States, it seemed like a logical place to get leverage for other organizing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}