A call for action

Long Beach Press Telegram

Article Launched: 03/01/2008 05:59:06 PM PST

 

Campaign against port's Clean Trucks Program is completely off track.

In a letter to the editor today, Nick Sramek, a member of the Long Beach Harbor Commission, explains why as a resident of the city's Westside, he feels strongly about the port's new Clean Trucks Program. Not once does he mention the Teamsters Union campaign against it.

He's more diplomatic than we are. There is nothing clean about the Teamsters campaign.

The Teamsters are advertising (including full-page ads in this newspaper) and lobbying to put pressure on Sramek, other commissioners, and especially Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster to kill the Clean Trucks Program.

The reason, the ads claim, is that the program puts the cost of cleaning up diesel pollution onto low-income truck drivers and taxpayers. But the truth is that it does exactly the opposite, by putting fees on containers (not taxpayers) and using the money to replace old, dirty diesel trucks.

What the Teamsters want is for the program to eliminate independent truckers by forcing drivers to become employees. Step 2, of course, would be for the Teamsters to organize the employees, which would give the union a huge revenue stream, plus the power to shut down the port, and probably make it easier to organize drivers in ports nationwide.

The Long Beach port has no problem with allowing drivers to become employees, but it doesn't want to try to force them because it certainly would provoke a lawsuit by trucking firms that could delay the cleanup for years. The port rejected the idea for that reason, and also because an outside study predicted major disruptions if the port were to try to mandate employees-only.

The Port of L.A., always a more politicized operation than the Port of Long Beach, is buying into the Teamster line. The L.A. commissioners are tightly controlled by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is deep inside the pocket of the Teamsters .

It's bad enough that the Teamsters would put Long Beach's clean-air program at risk for selfish reasons, but what is far worse is that certain environmental groups are doing the same thing by lending their names to the union's campaign in exchange for Teamster money and clout.

The National Resource Defense Council's lawyers say they will sue the Port of Long Beach unless it backs down and mandates employee-only truck drivers. The basis of the suit would be - get this - the port isn't moving fast enough to clean up pollution. Such a suit could delay the port's truck cleanup for years.

The ads, presumably paid for by the Teamsters and endorsed by the NRDC, proclaim that "Mayor Foster Took a Wrong Turn on the Road to Clean Air," and urge readers to call Mayor Foster at 562 570-6801 and tell him to get back on track.

Now that you know what really is going on, maybe you'd like to give him a call, too, and congratulate him on standing up to the Teamsters on behalf of clean air. While you're at it, you might make a call to the NRDC as well: 310 434-2300, and tell its lawyers to get back on track.