Post by anonymousguest on Jan 2, 2011 8:14:20 GMT -5
Port Drivers - "Sharecroppers on Wheels"
It’s another picture down on the waterfront
By Advance Business Capital
Truckers who are Owner-Operators like to think of themselves as “the last cowboys”: ornery cusses who cherish their freedom above security; cargo drovers whose lives may be lonely and aimless but at least their own to choose. This might be sometimes true for long-haul heroes, but less for short-haulers and not at all for the most forlorn of O-O’s, the ones who work the nation’s ports. A recently released report finds port drivers to be among the most oppressed non-agricultural workers in the U.S. They are, in the words of the report, “share-croppers on wheels.”
Anything but Independent
This study, conducted by labor market experts at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) along with the Management and Labor departments of Rutgers University, concludes that the typical port driver is regularly and intentionally misclassified as an “independent contractor” by freight companies that service the country’s ocean ports, allowing them to pay reduced wages and no benefits while shifting the burden of vehicle maintenance to their “non-employees.” As one disgruntled trucker puts it, “We have to pay to work.”
The study contends that while these drivers are technically independent contractors, they are anything but independent. Measured by monthly workload; the U.S.’s 110,000 port drivers effectively function as company employees without the equivalent job security.
Rigging the Game
“Trucking companies across the U.S. are rigging the game by forcing port drivers, who ship everything from tennis shoes to televisions across thousands of miles, into taking poverty-level wages,” says David Bensman, a respected labor relations professor at Rutgers. “This new report sheds light on an underground economy in which companies are skirting a host of obligations in order to profit greatly – at great cost to the public, the government and most of all, the people they hire.”
The Big Rig: Poverty, Pollution and the Misclassification of Truck Drivers at America’s Ports reflects findings from dozens of in-depth interviews of drivers in 39 companies on both coasts. The report also examined and recorded thousands of employment documents (including truck leases, pay stubs, insurance provisions, meeting agendas, log books and job applications).
“These truckers may be called ‘independents,’ but their working conditions have nothing in common with a true independent business,” says report co-author and attorney Rebecca Smith. “By misclassifying drivers, companies dictate how, when and where drivers do their work – leaving them financially and operationally dependent day-in and day-out.”
Misclassified Out of the Middle Class
Taken on its own, “misclassification” sounds like little more than a clerical error, but it’s at the heart of the downward economic spiral that over the last thirty years has sucked port drivers (and other O-Os) from middle-class status to working class to life just above the poverty line.
A bit of background. The 1930s, the era of the Great Depression, was the great turning point for the fledgling American labor movement. During the Democrats’ twenty years in the White House (FDR and Harry Truman: 1932-1952), working-class Americans gained a level of wage security their parents had never known. This coincided with the rise of American heavy industry and general prosperity that greatly expanded the country’s middle class to include factory workers and small retailers.
Truckers benefited too. The Teamsters Union ruthlessly gathered the country’s patchwork of driver unions into one giant organization with intimidating bargaining power. There was undeniably corruption and brutality in the Teamsters, particularly under Jimmy Hoffa’s gangster-like presidency, but only a union as powerful as the Teamsters could have stood up to and negotiated with the giant and exploitive trucking companies of the times.
“The Box”
Ironically, in 1952, near the height of trade union power, an innovation in shipping, little noticed at the time, was introduced which would dramatically change the terms between the American transportation industry and its workers.
It was “the box,” or intermodal shipping container, a rectangular metal shell 35 ft long, 8 ft wide and 8½ ft tall, It was the invention of Malcolm McLean, owner of a shipping operation that serviced southern ports. McLean’s creation had the combined glamour of a shoebox and a tin can, but it reduced “break-bulk” time (when freight is transferred from one vehicle to another) from days to hours. Instead of platoons of stevedores manhandling crates down gangplanks, a handful of crane operators could lift the containers from a ship’s hold to a waiting truck. The savings in time and labor could go as high as 90%!
The world went flat. Hugely reduced shipping costs made global trade a reality. Goods could be manufactured overseas and sold in America for less than the cost of locally-made products. Entrepreneurs like Sam Walton saw the savings in scale and translated it into big box retailing, bringing bargains to rural communities previously hostage to local shops.
Power Shift
As the size of retailers grew, bargaining power shifted to shippers. There are about two dozen major ports in the U.S. In 2009, twenty million containers carrying all kinds of overseas consumer goods—furniture, stuffed animals, running shoes, microwaves, pens—moved from ship to truck and then to warehouses, rail yards or trucking hubs. The same trucks also carried American goods such as farm equipment, semiconductors and machine tools from warehouses, rail yards and hubs to marine terminals, again in shipping containers.
Vehicles that do this specialized hauling are called drayage trucks. They are diesel-fueled, heavy-duty workhorses that haul an average of a hundred miles or less. The Rutgers report estimates there are 5,000 drayage companies, the great majority of them small operations with less than $10 million in annual revenue.
Though there are many shipping companies, the greatest amount of freight is concentrated in relatively few businesses. They are the behemoth retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot. Because there are no drayage companies remotely equal in size, these shippers dictate rock-bottom prices while continually imposing strict service requirements. According to the report, the small size and ruthless rivalry between port truckers leave them “little bargaining power vis-à-vis the shipping lines and cargo owners.” As a consequence, they are condemned to “ferocious price competition.” Even the largest drayage firms have seen “flat rates stretching back to the early 1990s” – twenty years!
Next Month
In this context, drayage companies strive to reduce their principle expense—labor costs—however they can. Their core strategy is to maintain a labor force by hiring “contractors” rather than employees. This practice has allowed most drayage companies to survive (few prosper), but shifting the financial burden to drivers has resulted in driving down wages to near-poverty level.
Drayage companies need to stay in business. Drayage drivers need to earn a living wage. Is there a way to accommodate both?
This is the first of a four-part series that examines the plight of drayage truckers and the drayage industry in American ports. We’ll continue our report on the plight of the American drayage trucker and its origins next month.
It’s another picture down on the waterfront
By Advance Business Capital
Truckers who are Owner-Operators like to think of themselves as “the last cowboys”: ornery cusses who cherish their freedom above security; cargo drovers whose lives may be lonely and aimless but at least their own to choose. This might be sometimes true for long-haul heroes, but less for short-haulers and not at all for the most forlorn of O-O’s, the ones who work the nation’s ports. A recently released report finds port drivers to be among the most oppressed non-agricultural workers in the U.S. They are, in the words of the report, “share-croppers on wheels.”
Anything but Independent
This study, conducted by labor market experts at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) along with the Management and Labor departments of Rutgers University, concludes that the typical port driver is regularly and intentionally misclassified as an “independent contractor” by freight companies that service the country’s ocean ports, allowing them to pay reduced wages and no benefits while shifting the burden of vehicle maintenance to their “non-employees.” As one disgruntled trucker puts it, “We have to pay to work.”
The study contends that while these drivers are technically independent contractors, they are anything but independent. Measured by monthly workload; the U.S.’s 110,000 port drivers effectively function as company employees without the equivalent job security.
Rigging the Game
“Trucking companies across the U.S. are rigging the game by forcing port drivers, who ship everything from tennis shoes to televisions across thousands of miles, into taking poverty-level wages,” says David Bensman, a respected labor relations professor at Rutgers. “This new report sheds light on an underground economy in which companies are skirting a host of obligations in order to profit greatly – at great cost to the public, the government and most of all, the people they hire.”
The Big Rig: Poverty, Pollution and the Misclassification of Truck Drivers at America’s Ports reflects findings from dozens of in-depth interviews of drivers in 39 companies on both coasts. The report also examined and recorded thousands of employment documents (including truck leases, pay stubs, insurance provisions, meeting agendas, log books and job applications).
“These truckers may be called ‘independents,’ but their working conditions have nothing in common with a true independent business,” says report co-author and attorney Rebecca Smith. “By misclassifying drivers, companies dictate how, when and where drivers do their work – leaving them financially and operationally dependent day-in and day-out.”
Misclassified Out of the Middle Class
Taken on its own, “misclassification” sounds like little more than a clerical error, but it’s at the heart of the downward economic spiral that over the last thirty years has sucked port drivers (and other O-Os) from middle-class status to working class to life just above the poverty line.
A bit of background. The 1930s, the era of the Great Depression, was the great turning point for the fledgling American labor movement. During the Democrats’ twenty years in the White House (FDR and Harry Truman: 1932-1952), working-class Americans gained a level of wage security their parents had never known. This coincided with the rise of American heavy industry and general prosperity that greatly expanded the country’s middle class to include factory workers and small retailers.
Truckers benefited too. The Teamsters Union ruthlessly gathered the country’s patchwork of driver unions into one giant organization with intimidating bargaining power. There was undeniably corruption and brutality in the Teamsters, particularly under Jimmy Hoffa’s gangster-like presidency, but only a union as powerful as the Teamsters could have stood up to and negotiated with the giant and exploitive trucking companies of the times.
“The Box”
Ironically, in 1952, near the height of trade union power, an innovation in shipping, little noticed at the time, was introduced which would dramatically change the terms between the American transportation industry and its workers.
It was “the box,” or intermodal shipping container, a rectangular metal shell 35 ft long, 8 ft wide and 8½ ft tall, It was the invention of Malcolm McLean, owner of a shipping operation that serviced southern ports. McLean’s creation had the combined glamour of a shoebox and a tin can, but it reduced “break-bulk” time (when freight is transferred from one vehicle to another) from days to hours. Instead of platoons of stevedores manhandling crates down gangplanks, a handful of crane operators could lift the containers from a ship’s hold to a waiting truck. The savings in time and labor could go as high as 90%!
The world went flat. Hugely reduced shipping costs made global trade a reality. Goods could be manufactured overseas and sold in America for less than the cost of locally-made products. Entrepreneurs like Sam Walton saw the savings in scale and translated it into big box retailing, bringing bargains to rural communities previously hostage to local shops.
Power Shift
As the size of retailers grew, bargaining power shifted to shippers. There are about two dozen major ports in the U.S. In 2009, twenty million containers carrying all kinds of overseas consumer goods—furniture, stuffed animals, running shoes, microwaves, pens—moved from ship to truck and then to warehouses, rail yards or trucking hubs. The same trucks also carried American goods such as farm equipment, semiconductors and machine tools from warehouses, rail yards and hubs to marine terminals, again in shipping containers.
Vehicles that do this specialized hauling are called drayage trucks. They are diesel-fueled, heavy-duty workhorses that haul an average of a hundred miles or less. The Rutgers report estimates there are 5,000 drayage companies, the great majority of them small operations with less than $10 million in annual revenue.
Though there are many shipping companies, the greatest amount of freight is concentrated in relatively few businesses. They are the behemoth retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot. Because there are no drayage companies remotely equal in size, these shippers dictate rock-bottom prices while continually imposing strict service requirements. According to the report, the small size and ruthless rivalry between port truckers leave them “little bargaining power vis-à-vis the shipping lines and cargo owners.” As a consequence, they are condemned to “ferocious price competition.” Even the largest drayage firms have seen “flat rates stretching back to the early 1990s” – twenty years!
Next Month
In this context, drayage companies strive to reduce their principle expense—labor costs—however they can. Their core strategy is to maintain a labor force by hiring “contractors” rather than employees. This practice has allowed most drayage companies to survive (few prosper), but shifting the financial burden to drivers has resulted in driving down wages to near-poverty level.
Drayage companies need to stay in business. Drayage drivers need to earn a living wage. Is there a way to accommodate both?
This is the first of a four-part series that examines the plight of drayage truckers and the drayage industry in American ports. We’ll continue our report on the plight of the American drayage trucker and its origins next month.
