A Tough Road for Truckers

The road under Franklin Rodriguez’s rig has never been paved with gold, but lately it’s littered with obstacles. Buckling under the combined strain of higher costs, cutthroat competition and longer delays at ever-busier docks in Long Beach and Los Angeles, independent trucker Rodriguez has realized he can’t afford to be his own boss. Not anymore.

“The owner-operator has lost his right to bargain with the companies we work for. You can’t tell them what you need. They are telling you what you deserve. Good thing I don’t have any bad habits or I just wouldn’t have anything,” said Rodriguez, 58, who has racked up plenty of mileage on short hauls from the two ports in the various trucks he has owned and operated since 1961.

Last year Rodriguez made $7,000.

This year, Rodriguez joined the union. It’s the same union that has been protesting this week at the twin ports. Thousands of truckers have stayed home, drastically slowing operations. Most of the independent truckers at the port have joined a new labor-leasing firm that demands higher wages and benefits for its drivers, but the shipping companies have been reluctant to hire those workers.

Independent truckers like Rodriguez are at the heart of the dispute, but drivers who work as salaried employees of trucking companies are also supporting the job action in a struggle for better pay, better working conditions and medical and retirement benefits.

They, too, are joining Local 9400 of the Communications Workers of America, which has signed a contract with a start-up labor-leasing firm that has offered to pay $25 an hour and lease or buy the trucks of the independents.

Much of the unhappiness stems from the “independent contractor” designation assigned to owner-operators by the trucking companies. The truckers say they are operating more like employees than owners of their own businesses.

“[The trucking companies] treat us like employees. They tell us what to do and where to go. They want to know where we are all the time. We’re subject to employee rules. Some of these guys even have to wear a company uniform,” Rodriguez said.

Union Director Laura Reynolds said federal agencies have turned their backs on the estimated 5,000 independent truckers. Since the early 1980s, unions have struggled with the sticky legal question of how to organize the independent contractors. The Communications Workers of America is the first to succeed. Trucking company officials and shippers say that so many independent drivers have entered the harbor-area workplace since the industry was deregulated in the early 1980s that they have saturated the market, bringing prices down and threatening their livelihood.

“They say the going rate for hauling from Point A to Point B is X and if you want it, take it--or goodbye. So you take [a job that] should pay $300 for $200 and then spend $100 in fuel,” Rodriguez said.

In the early 1980s, when insurance cost $100 a month and diesel was about 50 cents a gallon, Rodriguez grossed about $56,000, but spent half of it on his costs, such as insurance, diesel fuel, blown tires and damaged mud flaps.

Not only has Rodriguez signed up with the new labor-leasing firm and driven his rig to Fontana for appraisal, but he has high hopes that the Transport Maritime Assn. will streamline port operations.

Truckers lose hours waiting in long lines to load or unload cargo. Rodriguez said he is lucky if he has enough time for two trips a day. And if he arrives with only his tractor--that’s called bobtailing--he gets paid only half the rate.

“The way it’s working now, you bobtail down to the port, you go get a chassis, you take the chassis to the loading dock, the longshoremen put the container on the chassis, you stop by the mechanic who checks to make sure everything is OK, and you’re finally going out the gate three hours later,” he says.

“And that’s if everything is OK. If the chassis has a flat tire, you have to unload, go all over the yard looking for a good chassis and start all over again.”

An independent trucker doesn’t want to hook up a chassis in disrepair. The steamship companies own them, but if they are returned to the yard with any sort of damage, the owner-operator gets the bill, Rodriguez said.

“Everything started getting bad with deregulation. With regulation the deal was, you do it for $80, he’s doing it for $80, so everybody’s doing it for $80 and everybody made $80. But deregulation is, this guy’s doing it for $80, that guy says he’ll do it for $70 and the guy over there says, ‘Hey man, I’ll haul it for $50,’ ” Rodriguez said.

“And everything else kept getting worse and worse and worse to the point that even employees of trucking companies aren’t getting benefits anymore and they’re getting away with it because nobody said they can’t. Until now.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Shipping Giants

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the two largest in the nation. Combined, they are the world’s third-busiest harbor and account for 25% of all container traffic in the United States. Figures are for fiscal 1995 unless otherwise indicted.

*

Top Exports

Long Beach: Bulk coke, bulk petroleum, chemicals, waste-paper, coal.

Los Angeles: Coal, petroleum coke, petroleum oils, wastepaper, iron and steel scrap.

*

Top Imports

Long Beach: Bulk petroleum, etectric machinery, plastic products, clothing, other machinery.

Los Angeles: Iron and steel scrap, petroleum oils, crude petroleum, bananas and plantains, motor vehicle parts.

*

Cargo Value (1994)

Long Beach: $70 billion

Los Angeles: $73.4 billion

*

Top Trading Partners

Long Beach: Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan.

Los Angeles: Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Ecuador

*

Employment*

Long Beach: 260,000

Los Angeles: 247,000

*

Wages*

Long Beach: $8 billion

Los Angeles: $8.2 billion

*

Tax Revenue*

Long Beach: $1.7 billion

Los Angeles: $1.3 billion

* Includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties; employment figures reflect all jobs generated by the ports.

Sources: Los Angeles and Long Beach ports