Dateline: New York/New Jersey

New Jersey Port Truck Drivers Protest Worker Intimidation & Wage Theft

December 9, 2011

On the first business day following a meeting truck drivers had with a lawyer to file a wage theft lawsuit against Proud 2 Haul, Ivana Koprowski, the owner, terminated two of the drivers who attended the meeting. Felix Jay and Gonzalo Chirino claim that they were told their terminations were for “working against the company and not with the company.”

In response, truck drivers filed charges with the labor board and organized a rally at the Tullo Truck Stop in Kearny, NJ in support of the two terminated drivers.

Flanked by community leaders and Teamsters, Felix and Gonzalo marched into Proud 2 Haul’s offices to demand that they be reinstated, with back pay and full employee rights for all drivers at the company.

“I’ve been hauling containers for three decades at these ports and over the years conditions for truck drivers have only worse,” said Felix Jay a married father of five and one of the drivers who was terminated. “Low-road companies like Proud 2 Haul and ruthless owners like Ivana Koprowski have made it impossible for port truck drivers to earn a living. They never miss an opportunity to deduct money from our paychecks or to deny us basic employee rights.”

A number of elected leaders and community, environmental and faith leaders have also lent their support to the truck drivers at Proud 2 Haul and made phone calls to the company expressing their concern.

“It’s an outrage that these workers – or any workers for that matter – become the targets of retaliation and harassment for simply exercising their right collective action,” said Assemblywoman Annette Quijano. “I’m also deeply concerned about the allegations of wage theft and worker misclassification, something the trucking industry has brushed off as ‘a long accepted practice’. I believe these practices are highly controversial and morally unconscionable.”

“Our ports are an economic engine that should generate good, quality jobs for New Jersey,” said Congressman Albio Siris. “This appears to be an example of employment practices that are used in port trucking and illustrates that we must review and reform this industry.”

“What’s happening at Proud 2 Haul is endemic of how the port trucking industry operates,” said Amy Goldsmith, chair of the Coalition for Healthy Ports and the statewide director of the New Jersey Environmental Federation. “By calling truck drivers ‘independent contractors’ instead of ‘employees’ trucking companies have stripped drivers of their rights, and evaded any responsibility for the diesel pollution and environmental health injustices the industry has imposed on port communities.”

Earlier this year truck drivers at Ironbound Express in Newark made similar wage theft allegations. Ramiro Gotay, a truck driver at Ironbound Express claims that the company deducted 6 percent of his weekly earnings, or just over $20,000 over five years working at the company. “That is money that was stolen from my daughter’s future, for her college education. The trucking companies operate as if they have a license to abuse truck drivers, but we’re saying ‘enough is enough.’”

The terminations at Proud 2 Haul are one example of a growing trend by port truck companies to silence truck drivers that are organizing to improve their working conditions in the run up to the busy holiday season. At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach 26 truck drivers were abruptly axed under the guise of “lay-offs” from the Toll Group – a company that hauls apparel for major retailers like Polo and Guess – after truck drivers demanded clean, permanent restroom facilities instead of the dirty outhouses the company offered them.

In a CBS Early News report, Robert Digges, a spokesman for the trucking industry tripped on his own tongue when he tried protesting the idea that trucking companies routinely cheat truck drivers. “They (trucking companies) believe they get a more productive employee – excuse me a more effective worker – a worker who is efficient, who has some skin in the game.”