Communities for Clean Ports Letter to the Port of Oakland Supporting Sustainability and Workers Rights
Next Tuesday the Port of Oakland will have decide whether it will take the less traveled path - one that leads to a clean sustainable trucking fleet that promotes the cleanest technologies and affirms the right of truck drivers to good wages, benefits, and safe and healthy working conditions.
If it chooses the well traveled path of allowing the trucking companies to continue pursuing profits at the expense of our health and environment then the toxic hazy hold that diesel pollution has on our Caifornia communities will only continue.
July 2, 2009
Commissioner Victor Uno, President
Commissioner Margaret Gordon
Commissioner Anthony A. Batarse, Jr.
Commissioner Pamela Calloway
Commissioner James Head
Commissioner Kenneth S. Katzoff
Port of Oakland
530 Water Street
Oakland, CA 94607
Dear Commissioners:
We write to you urging the Commission to vote in favor of a resolution stating that the Port of Oakland supports a Comprehensive Truck Management Plan that will ensure a sustainable and just approach to addressing the environmental, safety, labor and security objectives that can only be achieved through a concession program. Specifically, this resolution should make clear the Commission’s support for a comprehensive, environmentally sound and economically sustainable concession program that accomplishes the following key goals: Establishing trucking companies as the responsible parties for buying and maintaining port-drayage trucks; affirming the rights of each driver to receive good wages, good benefits, and safe and healthy working conditions; and ensuring that the cleanest available trucks become a significant portion of the drayage fleet.
Californians are becoming increasingly concerned about the impacts international trade is having on the economy, their health and the environment. Over the last several years these concerns have become increasingly focused on the environmental and workforce conditions in and around our State’s ports. As a result of this increased attention it has become clear that the poor environmental performance of our ports is costing us billions of dollars in lost productivity and health costs every year from air pollution alone – and that emissions from port drayage fleets are a major source of the toxic and smog-forming emissions that foul our air and poison our communities, as well as of the greenhouse gases that threaten Californians with climate change.
We find ourselves in this situation because trucking companies have – for decades – used a time-tested strategy of sticking to outdated, unfair and unsustainable economic and environmental models to hold down their costs by shifting them to California truck drivers and taxpayers around the state. On the economic front, they classify drivers as independent owner operators. This has allowed them to force drivers to bear the burden of maintaining their vehicles and buying fuel and insurance. At the same time, drivers are also responsible for supporting their families on an average take home income of around $30,000 per year. As a result they struggle to maintain their trucks and the environment suffers for it. On the environmental side, they force California taxpayers – especially those in communities closest to the ports and goods movement corridors – to pay tens of billions of dollars in costs of the increased pollution they generate as a result of decades of refusing to invest in cleaner trucks, including the alternative-fueled trucks that are the cleanest available today.
To be clear, this broken system is forcing Californians to subsidize the price of goods sold outside the state. Californians are sacrificing their health, their lives and their hard-earned dollars so that consumers in places like Texas and the Midwest can save some pocket change when they buy a DVD player made in Asia.
As an organization based in Southern California that has worked extensively influencing the Los Angeles Clean Trucks Program, we stress the importance of high environmental standards and policies that incentivize cleanest available trucks, as well as a concession model in achieving a sustainable port drayage fleet that cleans the air and affirms driver rights. Poorly paid drivers cannot and should not bear the burden of cleaning up the environment. Moreover if we seek a permanent solution to the soot, smog, and toxic fumes in our communities and along our highways it is obvious that the trucking companies have the resources and the obligation to maintain and renew the port drayage fleet. If we allow the burden to unjustly remain with the drivers – as the trucking industry lobby is seeking to do - several years down the road we will once again be faced with a dirty unsafe trucking fleet that needs to be subsidized with public money.
The need to move beyond diesel technologies is also a crucial component of a sustainable drayage fleet. Port drayage trucks that run on alternative fuels provide significant and important reductions in toxic and smog-forming emissions, as well as greenhouse gases, above and beyond even the cleanest diesel trucks. They also reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce vulnerability to diesel price fluctuations. After decades of padding their profits by using cheaper old, dirty diesel trucks, trucking companies can afford to start doing their part to invest in the alternative-fueled trucks that are the cleanest available. These costs should not be placed on the overburdened backs of individual owner operators.
Please demonstrate your support for a sustainable trucking industry that does not depend on continuous port subsidies by passing this resolution supporting a comprehensive concession model. Trucking companies have the capital and the financial ability to buy and maintain clean trucks and treat their employees in a just and dignified manner that includes good wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Sincerely,
Ryan Wiggins
Communities for Clean Ports
4000 Long Beach Blvd. Suite 249
Long Beach, CA 90807
rwiggins@cleanports.org
(323) 474 - 4650
If it chooses the well traveled path of allowing the trucking companies to continue pursuing profits at the expense of our health and environment then the toxic hazy hold that diesel pollution has on our Caifornia communities will only continue.
July 2, 2009
Commissioner Victor Uno, President
Commissioner Margaret Gordon
Commissioner Anthony A. Batarse, Jr.
Commissioner Pamela Calloway
Commissioner James Head
Commissioner Kenneth S. Katzoff
Port of Oakland
530 Water Street
Oakland, CA 94607
Dear Commissioners:
We write to you urging the Commission to vote in favor of a resolution stating that the Port of Oakland supports a Comprehensive Truck Management Plan that will ensure a sustainable and just approach to addressing the environmental, safety, labor and security objectives that can only be achieved through a concession program. Specifically, this resolution should make clear the Commission’s support for a comprehensive, environmentally sound and economically sustainable concession program that accomplishes the following key goals: Establishing trucking companies as the responsible parties for buying and maintaining port-drayage trucks; affirming the rights of each driver to receive good wages, good benefits, and safe and healthy working conditions; and ensuring that the cleanest available trucks become a significant portion of the drayage fleet.
Californians are becoming increasingly concerned about the impacts international trade is having on the economy, their health and the environment. Over the last several years these concerns have become increasingly focused on the environmental and workforce conditions in and around our State’s ports. As a result of this increased attention it has become clear that the poor environmental performance of our ports is costing us billions of dollars in lost productivity and health costs every year from air pollution alone – and that emissions from port drayage fleets are a major source of the toxic and smog-forming emissions that foul our air and poison our communities, as well as of the greenhouse gases that threaten Californians with climate change.
We find ourselves in this situation because trucking companies have – for decades – used a time-tested strategy of sticking to outdated, unfair and unsustainable economic and environmental models to hold down their costs by shifting them to California truck drivers and taxpayers around the state. On the economic front, they classify drivers as independent owner operators. This has allowed them to force drivers to bear the burden of maintaining their vehicles and buying fuel and insurance. At the same time, drivers are also responsible for supporting their families on an average take home income of around $30,000 per year. As a result they struggle to maintain their trucks and the environment suffers for it. On the environmental side, they force California taxpayers – especially those in communities closest to the ports and goods movement corridors – to pay tens of billions of dollars in costs of the increased pollution they generate as a result of decades of refusing to invest in cleaner trucks, including the alternative-fueled trucks that are the cleanest available today.
To be clear, this broken system is forcing Californians to subsidize the price of goods sold outside the state. Californians are sacrificing their health, their lives and their hard-earned dollars so that consumers in places like Texas and the Midwest can save some pocket change when they buy a DVD player made in Asia.
As an organization based in Southern California that has worked extensively influencing the Los Angeles Clean Trucks Program, we stress the importance of high environmental standards and policies that incentivize cleanest available trucks, as well as a concession model in achieving a sustainable port drayage fleet that cleans the air and affirms driver rights. Poorly paid drivers cannot and should not bear the burden of cleaning up the environment. Moreover if we seek a permanent solution to the soot, smog, and toxic fumes in our communities and along our highways it is obvious that the trucking companies have the resources and the obligation to maintain and renew the port drayage fleet. If we allow the burden to unjustly remain with the drivers – as the trucking industry lobby is seeking to do - several years down the road we will once again be faced with a dirty unsafe trucking fleet that needs to be subsidized with public money.
The need to move beyond diesel technologies is also a crucial component of a sustainable drayage fleet. Port drayage trucks that run on alternative fuels provide significant and important reductions in toxic and smog-forming emissions, as well as greenhouse gases, above and beyond even the cleanest diesel trucks. They also reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce vulnerability to diesel price fluctuations. After decades of padding their profits by using cheaper old, dirty diesel trucks, trucking companies can afford to start doing their part to invest in the alternative-fueled trucks that are the cleanest available. These costs should not be placed on the overburdened backs of individual owner operators.
Please demonstrate your support for a sustainable trucking industry that does not depend on continuous port subsidies by passing this resolution supporting a comprehensive concession model. Trucking companies have the capital and the financial ability to buy and maintain clean trucks and treat their employees in a just and dignified manner that includes good wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Sincerely,
Ryan Wiggins
Communities for Clean Ports
4000 Long Beach Blvd. Suite 249
Long Beach, CA 90807
rwiggins@cleanports.org
(323) 474 - 4650
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