Dateline: Seattle/Tacoma
The Battle in Seattle & Beyond
September 16, 2011
According to a front page expose in the Seattle Times “truck drivers who serve Seattle’s busy shipping port say they’re losing patience with chronically low pay and poor working conditions.”
No truer words have been spoken.
Port truck drivers, community activists, environmentalists and faith leaders used the backdrop of the annual American Association of Port Authorities convention in Seattle to bring attention to the dirty and broken port trucking industry plaguing workers and communities in port cities around the country.
The weeklong series of direct action began with a massive 600-person rally at the airport to welcome conference attendees. On the first morning of the convention pranksters slipped a revised conference agenda underneath the doors of all 900 rooms at the Westin Hotel, promoting mock sessions like The ‘Green Washing’ of the Cargo Supply Chain Award and Integrating Jim Crow into Today’s Workplace. By mid-week, port drivers and faith leaders from Seattle, Oakland and Los Angeles sang the African-American spiritual “Wade in the Water” after police prevented them from presenting a petition to the Port of Seattle Commissioners which asserts the rights of port truck drivers to a “family-sustaining wage,” collective-bargaining rights, clean restrooms, pay for time wasted in traffic or at entry gates, and money to afford the newer, cleaner trucks that the Port might require by 2015.
By the end of the week protesters gathered outside the conference hotel and shut down 5th Avenue in downtown Seattle. Throughout the week organizations like the Sierra Club, Puget Sound SAGE, the Teamsters, the Church Council of Greater Seattle and the Rainforest Action Network stood in solidarity with port drivers and port communities to demand an end to Seattle’s ‘port of poverty and pollution.’
“We need help,” said driver Yosef Bruke. “Nobody respects us. We are called names you don’t want to hear in public. We are foreigners, but we’re just trying to make a living like everybody else. We are the middleman. We demand respect.”
But what’s happening in Seattle is only the latest in a series of driver-led actions at other ports in recent months.
In Los Angeles and Long Beach port truck drivers working at the Toll Group - a company that handles cargo for popular apparel and athletic brands Guess? and Under Armour – marched on the boss to demand an end to Jim Crow-like working conditions where they were forced to use dirty, unsanitary restrooms while other employees were free to use permanent indoor restrooms and break facilities.
Drivers in Newark held a successful work stoppage at Ironbound Express to re-instate a co-worker who had been fired for “drinking from the wrong water fountain.” These same drivers filed wage theft lawsuits to return tens of thousands of dollars taken from their paychecks illegally and they are organizing drivers at other companies to fight trucking companies that make illegal deductions from driver paychecks.
And while a national movement of port truck drivers is organizing across ports, so is a visionary base of community, faith and environmental leaders who see a connection between the economic injustices of port truck drivers and the impact on the environment and communities.
The Rainforest Action Network reported in their blog The Understory, “It’s crossing issues and bringing together unlikely allies to challenge corporations and politicians acting against the needs of their citizens… under the banner of “Welcome to the Port of Poverty and Pollution,” activists with RAN joined immigrant truck drivers, port communities impacted by economic and clean air issues, Teamsters, and faith leaders standing in solidarity in downtown Seattle”