NEWS RELEASE February 6, 2012 CONTACT: David West, Executive Director, Puget Sound Sage (206) 919-2774
STATEMENT OF COMMUNITY SUPPORT FOR PORT TRUCK DRIVERS
We are a powerful alliance of community, faith, immigrant rights, civil rights and environmental organizations from throughout the Puget Sound area here to bring strong and steadfast support to the Port of Seattle truck drivers refuse to return to work due to unsafe and untenable working conditions. These drivers transport tens of billions of dollars in manufactured goods every year, generating wealth for our region and are at the fulcrum of our economic recovery. But they do not share in industry prosperity because the system is fixed against them. We know they work in sweatshops on wheels, are exploited and unvalued.
Last Monday, over 120 Port drivers traveled to our state legislature to voice support for a bill that would allow drivers the opportunity to inspect corporate-owned equipment attached to the trucks they drive. The proposed legislation would also incentivize these corporations to provide them with safe equipment. Unfortunately, when these drivers, mostly immigrants, returned to their jobs, they endured intimidation, harassment and retaliation. They were called “animals” by their dispatchers and one of the leaders was suspended from work—punished for organizing the trip to Olympia.
Since then, hundreds of drivers who serve the Port’s largest shipping companies have now refused to return to work in spite of repeated threats from owners. Port drivers are routinely issued tickets for equipment they do not own or are even allowed to inspect themselves before it is attached to their trucks. They are not even informed about the contents of their trailers, or the weight of the load. Yet they are legally and financially responsible for any weight or safety violations.
Meanwhile, port-adjacent communities are filled with these rickety, mechanically unsafe, diesel-spewing rigs, creating a health and environmental crisis. This has led to spiked asthma and respiratory illnesses among the drivers and among the residents of our Southwest Seattle communities, due to the exposure to high levels of toxic pollutants from these trucks.
The signatory organizations and individuals gathered here today assert that these Port drivers must not be treated as second-class citizens and relegated to working long hours in a dangerous industry, isolated from justice and fairness. We support their refusal to return to work until this exploitive system is changed.
We are:
Calling on all elected officials at the local, state and federal levels to support these drivers in their struggle for basic human and civil rights. We join the drivers in their demand that their employers, the trucking companies, take responsibility for the maintenance and safety of the equipment they own;
Calling on the Port of Seattle to fix this broken and cruel system and create a safer working environment. This taxpayer-funded agency should work to build a trucking industry that allows truckers to earn a decent living and does not exploit low-wage immigrant drivers. We challenge the Port not to take sides with big shippers and retailers like Wal-Mart who dominate port commerce, which further exploits and harms the drivers; and
Calling on the driver’s employers and the shipping companies to negotiate with these workers in good faith for a solution that is economically sustainable and places the burden for safe equipment where it belongs—on the companies that own them. We all deserve our roads to be safe for travel and our communities to be safe to live in.
We stand here today declaring the essential civil and human rights of
these drivers. Their struggle is at a confluence of our deeply-held
values:worker justice, a clean
and safe environment and the right for everyone to have a chance at the
American dream.
A.
Philip Randolph Institute – Seattle Chapter
Asian
Counseling & Referral Service
Asian Pacific American Labor
Alliance – Seattle
CASA Latina
Center for a Changing Workforce
Church Council of Greater
Seattle
Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites
Community Coalition for
Environmental Justice
Community Alliance for Global
Justice
Deep Sea Fisherman's Union of
the Pacific
El Comité Pro Reforma Migratoria
Y Justicia Social
Council on American Islamic
Relations (CAIR) – WA
Economic
Opportunity Institute
Faith Action Network
Fellowship of Reconciliation –
Seattle Chapter
Freedom Socialist Party
GCC/IBT Local 767 M
Got Green
Gurdwara Singh Sabha of
Washington (Sikh Temple)
ILWU Local 52
Interfaith Taskforce on
Homelessness
IUPAT Local 10
Jessica Finn-Coven
Laborers Local 242
LIUNA – NROC (Laborers)
Low Income Housing Institute
Musicians’ Association of
Seattle, Local 76-493
WA State Labor Education and
Research Center
Martin Luther King Jr. County
Labor Council
Minority Executive Directors
Coalition of King County (MEDC)
Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 117
Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 174
Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters Joint Council 28
El Centro de la Raza
National Asian Pacific American
Women’s Forum, Seattle Chapter
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