Port of Long Beach commissioners Tuesday approved the final component of a controversial port truck replacement and regulation plan, formally breaking ranks with officials from the neighboring Los Angeles port over a contentious labor portion of the plan.
The five-member board's unanimous vote completes a nearly 11-month effort by Long Beach officials to approve the entire $2.2 billion, five-year plan that seeks to replace or retrofit nearly 17,000 short-haul diesel trucks servicing the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
During the six-hour standing-room-only meeting, the board listened to nearly 100 members of the public, labor groups, environmental organizations and industry offer comments ranging from tearful testimonials of the hardships faced by port truck drivers to congratulations and thankful blessings from industry representatives.
Most of the testimony revolved around a one-line change in a labor proviso within the truck plan. The two ports developed the truck plan jointly from inception, however, on Friday Long Beach officials said they would drop a Los Angeles-supported requirement of the plan that trucking firms licensed by the port under the plan only hire drivers as per-hour employees. The Long Beach plan now provides that trucking firms may use employees, independent owner-operators, or any combination of the two.
More than 80 percent of the drivers in the 16,800-strong port drayage fleet are independent owner-operators. Surveys have shown most do not wish to be employees.
Current International Brotherhood of Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr., has made the unionization of port drivers a key mission. Toward this end, Hoffa proposed to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in 2006, and his union has since heavily supported, the employee-only mandate.
"We are not the church, we are not the federal government, we are not the state government," said Commissioner James Hankla. "We are the Port of Long Beach and we have very specific duties and responsibilities bestowed on us, not only by the city charter, but by state law as to what we can and cannot do -- should and should not do."
The underlying message from the commissioners in passing the plan was that further delays in moving forward with the port's emission reduction goals caused by the contention over the employee-only mandate could not be tolerated, even if commissioners, including Hankla, might agree that the drayage system needs to be overhauled.
"I am astonished that many environmental groups have subordinated their environmental agendas, which we have wholeheartedly subscribed to, to demand a remedy for which there is no environmental justification. There may be great justification, but no environmental justification," Hankla said.
Hankla stressed that adhering to the employee-only mandate would only delay the entire truck plan and open the entire plan and ports up to litigation.
Commission President Mario Cordero, a vocally staunch supporter of the employee-only mandate, said he believed that the independent drivers in the ports are being "misclassified" as owner-operators. He directly tied the labor status of the truckers to the creation of a "drayage system that has wreaked havoc in the environment."
Cordero asked that the truck plan be approved as a "concept" only, and guaranteed that it would face future modification. He cautioned that the final version of the truck plan should not incentivize the "existing drayage model."
Despite this, Cordero ultimately voted with the other commissioners to approve the plan, saying, "our shareholders are the public and we must pass strong environmental plans that result in dividends through cleaner air." He also cited the mandate of Long Beach Mayor Robert Foster for the port to move forward with cleaning the air as quickly as possible.
The American Trucking Association, which had threatened to sue the ports over the employee-only mandate, was quick to praise the port Tuesday.
"Your actions today will put those of us truly working to achieve environmental improvements back on track to meeting our mutual clean air goals," said Curtis Whalen, executive director of the ATA's Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference.
Other members of the industry also voiced their support for the plan.
"Our warehouses and intermodal trucks are part of this community and believe cleaner trucks and improved operational efficiencies to move cargo faster work together to reduce pollution, increase driver and motor carrier compensation," said Patty Senecal of the International Warehouse Logistics Association.
Ocean carriers and terminal operators also offered support for the port's movement on the plan.
"Our members support the rational and collaborative efforts taken by the port that focuses on cleaning up the air and improving the business climate by taking steps to avoid an effort to re-regulate the trucking industry," said Michele Grubbs, vice president the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. The PMSA's ocean carrier and terminal operator members represent about 90 percent of the containerized cargo handled on the West Coast.
"We are pleased by this effort to move away from gridlock and litigation," Grubbs said.
In an odd reversal of support, many of the environmental groups that had originally supported the port's pollution efforts were highly critical of the port's actions Tuesday.
The National Resources Defense Council, which two weeks ago threatened the port with a lawsuit for not moving quickly enough on the truck plan, asked the commissioners to delay their vote and open the plan up to a public comment period.
"The plan does not fix the broken trucking system," NRDC lawyer Adrian Martinez told the board. "The plan does not push for the cleanest available trucks " and the plan does not address community impacts. It amounts to what I consider an unenforceable honor code to address the issues that the communities will face."
Martinez added the port's apparent split with the Los Angeles port over the plan had raised concerns within the NRDC. He said his group hoped that the split would not affect other portions of the two port's cooperative plans to cut other pollution within the ports.
An overview of the approved Long Beach items regarding the truck plan can be viewed on the port's website at www.polb.com or directly by clicking the following link: Port Truck Plan Overview.
The Los Angeles port board must still vote on its version of the plan.
Because the adjacent ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are universally considered one port by labor and industry, with trucks routinely moving between the different facilities of each, sometimes on a daily basis, it is unclear how different plans adopted by the two ports would be implemented.
Officials from both ports have said that viability of the program would be endangered if the ports do not move in unison, adopt identical plans and implement identical regulations throughout the joint port complex.
Los Angeles officials, with three weeks left before a report on their idea of a licensing model is due back from the port-hired Boston Consulting Group, said Friday that a decision on their final portions would not be immediately forthcoming. A brief statement issued Friday on the port's Web site said movement on their version of the truck plan final components would take place in "upcoming weeks."
The agenda for the weekly Los Angeles port commission meeting on Thursday does not include any mention of the truck plan.
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