Posted on 01/03/2007 5:05:44 AM PST by radar101
Salvador Abrica hooks up his first load at a warehouse in Wilmington, Calif., before heading south to San Clemente.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Fanning out from the mammoth ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, some 16,000 mostly Latino truck drivers crisscross Southern California's congested highways in their timeworn trucks, carrying freight that ultimately will make its way to every part of the country.
But a number of the drivers are undocumented immigrants, and they may soon find themselves out of work. So, too, freight may begin backing up across the country.
That's because the federal government, in its drive to boost port security, is on the verge of issuing guidelines for checking identities of the nation's 750,000 port workers, including 110,000 or so who work as haulers.
"We believe finalization is in the coming weeks. It's very soon," said Darrin Kayser, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, describing the government's plans for the security system.
Like any business pondering how it will get by without undocumented workers, the trucking industry is in deep debate about what could lie ahead.
"There could be a huge impact," said Curtis Whalen, an official of the American Transportation Association. "If you start getting whacked in the West, you will have an impact in Chicago because of less traffic flow."
Cargoes could go to other ports
Shippers could transfer their cargoes to ports other than Los Angeles and Long Beach or the New York area, where it is estimated that most of the undocumented drivers work. Trucking companies, already struggling with high turnover rates and a dearth of drivers, could be forced to increase their pay to find new drivers.
And that would hit consumers who have benefited from a freight system that has grown by leaps and bounds but kept costs down by pinching pennies all the way, especially those that wind up in the truckers' hands.
The ports in Southern California are a good example of that.
Competition depressed wages
From afar, the ports look like an incredible success: miles of massive cranes and docks jammed with freighters riding low in the water from all the containers they are carrying from Asia. Between 1990 and 2005, the number of containers arriving at the Los Angeles-Long Beach ports quadrupled, and that number is expected to triple in the next 10 years.
But the port drivers haven't shared in the bounty.
Not so long ago many port drivers in Southern California were Teamsters union members with pay and benefits. When the government deregulated the industry in 1980, small, nonunion companies flooded in. Rather than hiring employees, however, they turned to mostly independent operators.
Fierce competition between the workers, and the companies that hire them, has kept wages depressed.
"I've been working here for 17 years and I can't even buy a house," said Long Beach driver David Mendoza, 42. Mendoza, who drives a 1976-model truck that he bought 10 years ago for $12,000, pulled out one company's rate sheet and compared the rates to those from a sheet several years old: There was little difference between the two.
If anything, the quoted rates are often the ceiling price. Firms often whipsaw haulers against one another, pushing wages much lower. Many haulers are no different from day laborers who gather on streets and bid on jobs, except that they have trucks.
Drivers "have tried to organize walkouts to get higher wages, but they can never get enough drivers to agree to anything because somebody else always comes in and does the work," said Art Wong, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach.
The median income for haulers is about $25,000 a year, experts say, but many have to work longer hours each year to make that kind of money. "It is really getting worse," grumbled Eduardo Galarza, 25, who said he made about $23,000 last year. He added that he hoped to find another job soon.
"There's a whole underground economy," said Ron Carver, a Teamsters official who has led a seven-year effort to organize port drivers nationally.
"There are companies who hire drivers who can't get any other job driving trucks. Drivers without documents, without licenses, or who are uninsurable. I've met them," Carver said.
Fifth of drivers are illegal
Kristen Monaco, a trucking industry expert at California State University-Long Beach, estimates that at least one-fifth of the drivers at the Los Angeles-Long Beach ports are illegal immigrants.
"It's an easy job to get into," Monaco said. "You don't have to speak a lot of English and you don't have to report to a lot of people. That also makes it easier for someone without papers to start driving."
Whalen, who oversees port operations for the American Transportation Association, blames shippers for making the situation more difficult, saying they set low ground-transport prices regardless of actual trucking costs. The situation is made worse, he said, by truckers whom he calls "bottom feeders" because they offer rock-bottom prices for hauling.
In turn, trucking firms that do pay good wages are being hurt, said Patty Senecal, a vice president with Transport Express and an official with the California Trucking Association. Many firms have simply quit working at the ports because they cannot compete, she said.
TRANSLATION: Mexican based trucks, with Mexican drivers, allowed to break rules and regs bu "Political Correctness".
dog gone it, why can't the govt tax more people more money and develope a transporter like on the liberal whackos bible, Star Trek?
yeah, the illegals only do the jobs Americans won't do.
Who allowed the undocumented workers the access to jobs without recourse due to illegal immigration status?
The government of course! The government must think we Americans are really stupid, because they work like that every day.
I prefer the legal, and more accurate, terminology: Illegal Alien.
It's no different than a drug kingpin spreading some of his cash to the community, then having those recipients on the jury to vote not-guilty, because they are beholding to the ILLEGAL drug dealers' handouts. What crime should go unpunished when the law-breaker is providing a service? Rape, murder, theft, etc.? That's effectively what we're doing as a country by allowing businesses to use the cheap ILLEGAL labor and forcing the taxpayers to pay for his/her benefits that are rightfully ONLY for U.S. Citizens.
doing the jobs americans won't........
I am sick to death of these scare tactics. My gosh, like the United States is going to come to a complete stand still, the nation is going to be in utter turmoil because the laws are enforced. Please, I don't care what they raise the cost of consumer good to, it will never be near the cost of free education, healthcare, food stamps and a decline of quality of life.
Making sure that security clearances were a top priority would have hurt the unions, the mobs, and the demonrat supporters.
My mother finally finished an extended "vacation" because "there was no freight to be hauled."
No, they would be drivers who enter the business and lack managerial skills to run a business. Once they get beyond owning and operating one or two trucks they are in trouble.
Ya' mean they underbid legitimate business by using illegal aliens?
Who wudda figured?
First the trucking companies...what next? Landscaping companies, Meat Packing companies???? Nah....that would be absurb....
One option is to just leave the Chinese crap on the ships and not unload it.
Fewer drivers needed. Less crap in Walmart. Fewer empty ships available to return to China for the next load.
This might be a solution both pro-immigration people like me and the antis could agree on.
Or like calling a drug dealer an undocumented pharmacist.
Totally agree with you. I am sick of hearing.... Jobs Americans won't do... I am sure the truck driver jobs will be filled just like any other job where the illegals get caught at. Its about time Americans got work for decent wages and the illegals went home. ....I am sick of illegals getting everything free and it costing us more.
If the so-called NAFTA Superhighway gets built, the longshoremen in Long Beach and elsewhere can kiss their jobs goodbye.
Foreign goods will be shipped to a port in Mexico. The goods then go by rail to the terminus of the highway and the Mexican truckers that will bring the goods into the United States.
This 'stuff' disgusts me.
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