US Truckers Paul Barham, Theodore Williams and Guillermo Perez. By Noa Oren

The Teamsters union of the US sent a delegation to Denmark in October 2004 to protest against abuses suffered by drivers who work for the Denmark-based steamship and terminal operations giant AP Moller-Maersk in US ports.

Responding to an invitation from the Danish trade union federation SID, the American delegation met with labour leaders, including Mac Urata of the ITF, Danish MPs, and the media. They also met senior officials of AP Moller-Maersk, the parent company of Maersk-Sealand and APM Terminals.

During the meeting, the Maersk officials expressed their disapproval of aggression against trade unionists by any managers in the US. They accepted that all drivers had a right to union involvement and agreed to look into the complaints of port drivers, which were conveyed to the meeting. The two parties did not reach agreement on the issue of collective bargaining rights for independent operators. However the Teamsters are now hopeful that a follow-up meeting will take place in the US.

Here are the stories of three drivers from the Teamsters delegation.

Unfair dismissal triggers downward spiral
Paul Barham had a pristine credit record until April 2002. In October 2004 however, he and his wife were attending bankruptcy hearings because of a spiral of events following Paul’s dismissal from Maersk subsidiary HUDD for organising activity. They stood to lose their home, two cars and a truck that a friend helped Paul to buy.

In 2000, Paul bought a rig and began working for HUDD. He soon became an activist in the Teamsters’ organising campaign, and would help out distributing union flyers and posters, and contacting port drivers to raise awareness. There were plenty of common issues of concern, such as unsafe intermodal equipment, long waiting times for container pick up, and surcharges to cover the rising costs of fuel.

In December 2000, Paul received the first in a series of warnings that if he continued his union activity he, “would be made available to the industry.” In April 2002 he was fired when he attempted to register a new vehicle, for allegedly spitting on another driver’s truck. His wife Catherine had just found out that she was pregnant.

In an interview the following week to appeal against his dismissal, Paul insisted that the spitting incident had never occurred and that several witnesses could attest to that fact. He was then told the real reason for his dismissal was that HUDD had too many trucks leased and not enough work. When Paul protested at being selected for termination ahead of newly hired drivers, the response was, “You are pro-Teamster and I am not going to have anyone around here trying to organise these drivers.”

Paul soon lost his new truck after falling behind with payments and though he found work driving an old company truck for a different company he and Catherine, fell further into debt and suffered great stress. In June Catherine miscarried their baby boy. Two weeks later Paul suffered a spinal compression injury during an accident at work and was unable to work for over eight months. With no income, no workman’s compensation and no savings, the Barhams have simply been unable to pay their bills.

To further complicate matters, Catherine was diagnosed with breast cancer and has recently completed chemotherapy treatment. She has been told she will not now be able to have children of her own.

Suspended for protesting
Theodore Williams has hauled containers as an owner operator at the Port of Houston, Texas for 17 years, and has been employed by Maersk trucking subsidiary Bridge Terminal Transport (BTT) for the last four. About a year ago the terminal manager ordered Williams to stop distributing flyers or posters and to remove previously posted organising signs. In 2000, four drivers were fired after refusing to remove bumper stickers from their trucks.

“This industry has always been hostile to organising,” Williams says.
Port drayage rates are exceedingly low and management is hostile to any attempt to negotiate improvements. When drivers for BTT attempted to discuss a rate increase, and other issues such as dispatchers’ abuse, intermodal equipment maintenance, fuel surcharges, and unpaid waiting times, management took no action.

Starting in January 2004 and again in February and March, the drivers met with the BTT terminal manager to no avail. On 10 May 10, 2004, Williams and other drivers decided that enough was enough and parked their trucks in protest.
When the drivers called the corporate office in North Carolina next day, the vice president they spoke with said he had no knowledge of the earlier complaints, and urged the drivers to return to work so they could resolve their problems. The drivers were promised minimally higher rates and a two per cent fuel surcharge increase.

However the issues were not satisfactorily resolved and led drivers to a further protest at the end of June 2004. Finally the drivers were given rate increases and fuel surcharges.

When the drivers returned to work this time, the terminal manager suspended Williams to punish him for his participation in the job protest. Managers were still openly hostile to the drivers’ efforts to organise themselves and seek improvements in their work situation, which led to very low morale among the drivers in Houston, Texas. To make matters worse, the dispatcher was regularly late giving drivers the paperwork needed to get paid, leading to delays in pay of two to three weeks.

Unpaid hours and underhand methods
A typical day for Guillermo Perez  starts at 5:00 am when his company dispatches him to pick up his first container load. Perez frequently hauls containers in and out of Maersk’s APM Universal terminal in Miami. Most days when Perez arrives at the terminal gates he has to wait for well over an hour to enter the terminal, until a checker verifies his papers.

After the trailer interchange, he proceeds to the chassis yard where he looks for a chassis that has no defects or, at the very least, a chassis whose defects are not apparent. If he can only find defective chassis, Perez has to take it to the maintenance and repair yard and wait while it is fixed.

He then proceeds to another line where a container is placed on the chassis. If the container is a refrigerated unit, then Perez must move to a new line where a generator is affixed to his container to maintain its temperature The entire process of working and waiting on the terminal, which can take several hours, is an integral component of each of Perez’s trips, and is unpaid.

In addition to the uncompensated work on the terminals, Perez worries that his tires may blow out because of overweight containers. The loaded generator and refrigerated container units are quite heavy, sometimes exceeding 100,000 lbs, which is well above the legal limit for driving on public highways. His company manager tells Perez to take side roads to avoid being stopped by authorities and weighed on their road scales. More important than his concern over his truck, Perez fears his truck could overturn and crush other vehicles and their occupants.

On a good day, Perez might be able haul three containers (each worth US$50) and return home at 21:30. Although Perez may gross US$150, he has barely covered his expenses after deducting truck payments, fuel, tolls, tags, insurance and unpaid waiting times. To support his wife and daughter, Perez takes seasonal work hauling produce after his hours at the port. Although Perez works over 80 hours a week, he still lacks health insurance, a pension, and paid vacations.

There are 1700 drivers at the Port of Miami suffering from the same predicament. The port drayage companies in Miami handle cargo from two terminals, Maersk subsidiary Universal Maritime Services Corporation (UMSC) and POMTOC. While no motor carriers in Miami are direct subsidiaries of Maersk, hundreds of port drivers working for many union and non-union trucking companies handle Maersk containers on a daily basis.

Prior to the port drivers’ protest in late June, in an effort to improve working conditions, driver representatives met on countless occasions with senior port officials. After their complaints were repeatedly noted and then ignored, the drivers in Miami commenced a peaceful protest. According to the police officials who monitored the protest 24 hours a day, there was not a single incidence of violence or intimidation. Their statements contradicted allegations by the Maersk owned terminal in their court papers, asking for a ban on any future protests. X


Noa Oren is public policy coordinator for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the US.