For Truckers, Long Haul Is a Costly One

Jose A. Hernandez is a believer, but for how long he can’t say. He took up his cause at the Los Angeles harbor, he says, because he was sick of being bilked and bullied by his employers. But he had no idea that the cause would cost him this much.

Hernandez, 31, was a truck driver who hauled freight from Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors until a few months ago. Rallying with thousands of other short-haul truckers, he has refused to work for the 200 trucking companies that service the waterfront, all in the name of higher wages and better treatment on the job.

Their boycott once had all the makings of a revolution in port operations. But one month after the work stoppage began, the majority of the truck drivers have returned to work, many because they found they could not survive without a regular paycheck. All that remains are holdouts like Hernandez.

In waging war on the trucking companies, he has lost his apartment, been kicked out of a homeless shelter, begged for rice and beans at a local church and alienated his wife, who is expecting their third child. But he says he will wash dishes in a restaurant or leave Southern California before he agrees to return to the ports without an increase in pay.

“You have to have some dignity some day,” said Hernandez, a truck driver for four years.

Held captive by economic forces beyond their reach, the truck drivers who continue to stay off the job believe that they can win if they tighten their belts for just a few more months.

Hernandez, who came to America from El Salvador, worked as a janitor before enrolling in trucking school. Out of work for four months and saddled with debt, he volunteers at the union hall and plays his guitar to pass the time and entertain his comrades.

He and the other independent truckers, who own their vehicles and are paid a per-load rate, contend that they should also be paid for the time they spend waiting in line at cargo terminals. When the truck drivers began their boycott, many trucking companies raised their rates--in some cases to attract independent drivers to replace the old ones--but it is uncertain whether those new rates will stick.

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Even though they may work months or years for the same companies, the truckers are considered independent contractors. They have made several ill-fated bids to unionize since the trucking industry was deregulated in the early 1980s. Their current organizing drive, which began 19 months ago, has enlisted about 4,200 truckers--still not enough muscle to persuade trucking companies to pay the drivers by the hour or meet their other demands.

The truck drivers have turned to their union, the Communications Workers of America, for help. Every day, they line the halls of the two-story union office in Paramount to pick up canned beans, fruit and baby formula for their families and to apply for help in paying their bills. The union can afford to cover only those bills marked “final notice,” one official said.

“These people are praying for milk,” said Judy Perez, a union official who processes the families’ requests for food. “They’re very, very poor. They do not want welfare. They want a chance to work for a decent wage.”

Jose Alfaro, 50, appeared at the union hall last week with $700 in electric, gas and rent bills in hand and picked up a packet of beans. He and his wife, Gladys, moved in with their son-in-law after they were unable to pay the rent on their Hawthorne home. He put most of his furniture and other belongings in a storage rental yard, but now finds himself unable to pay for that. And he says he owes thousands of dollars for medical treatment for his wife, who suffers from asthma and other ailments.

“I’ve been missing appointments because we don’t have any money to pay for them. And I need to have a house, a home of our own that we can depend on,” said Gladys, 46. “I hope this fight is over, so that he can start working.”

Her husband of 28 years hung his head.

“I’m not thinking about going back to the companies that ripped us off,” Jose Alfaro said.

Many truck drivers bet heavily on their new employer, Transport Maritime Assn., a Cerritos firm founded by former insurance agent Donald L. Allen. The company has released no financial documents, but claims to have $125 million in backing from British investors, and has pledged to buy or lease the drivers’ trucks, and to pay them $25 an hour. Now the firm is mired in legal talks.

“They wanted to do this too quick, without all the paperwork they needed,” said Libardo Gutierrez, another unionized trucker who volunteers at the union office. “They weren’t ready.”

The truckers also are waiting for their union, which has been devastated by recent telecommunications layoffs, to sign pacts with other harbor-area trucking companies. Still others are looking to city and state politicians to push for higher wages or longer terminal hours. Eight drivers have undertaken a hunger strike on the steps of City Hall to draw support for the boycott.

A labor aid organization funded by the United Way, Labor Community Services, has delivered thousands of pounds of food to the union office to help feed the families without incomes. The union also has built a “member assistance fund” with cash donations from other unions, including a recent $10,000 gift from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

“Everybody needs money here. We’re all broke,” said Tony Flamenco, 39, a driver since 1978. He had saved a few hundred dollars to prepare for the boycott and to feed his wife and two teenagers. But as a volunteer at the union hall, he has witnessed the havoc wreaked on other families who were just scraping by long before they started to live without paychecks.

“They don’t think about their bills. They don’t think about their illnesses. They don’t think about sending their daughter to college. And that’s terrible,” Flamenco said. But, he added, “this is the last chance we have.”

There are periodic blips of activity to lift the truckers’ spirits: A few dozen truck drivers who had been dispatched by Transport Maritime showed off their $251 paychecks last week--a sign that the company does have at least some financial wherewithal.

And during a major union protest last week outside Long Beach’s Pacific Container Terminal, about 35 dockworkers from the powerful International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union walked off their jobs for a few hours to join the hundreds of truckers outside the terminal gates. It was the first time the dockworkers union had demonstrated public support for the truck drivers.

But in the musty, jammed halls of the union office, it is hard to know which way the tide is turning, or whether it is shifting at all.

“For me this is difficult,” said Hernandez, a trucker who has been involved with the unionization effort for 18 months. “But I won’t go back to the harbor yet because I’m sure this is going to work. We don’t know when, maybe two, three, five months. No problem.”

Hernandez, his wife and their two children lived in a one-bedroom, $465-a-month apartment in Long Beach until February, when the landlord demanded a rent payment they couldn’t make. Hernandez said his last employer, Harbor Express, had broken its contract with him and he could not find other work.

He pulled his 14-year-old son, out of school and moved the family into Harbor Interfaith Shelter in San Pedro, where they lived until the end of April. Hernandez picked up a few loads for a handful of different trucking companies, but could not meet the shelter’s requirement that he save money to pay for his own housing.

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After being forced out of the shelter three weeks ago, Hernandez said a friend from the union helped sneak the family into an empty two-bedroom apartment in Compton. The family hunkered down in silence for a week. Then Hernandez received his federal tax refund in the mail and used it to pay the two months’ rent to his new Compton landlord.

Now his money is gone. His wife, Hilda, is due to give birth to a daughter within the week.

“I thought I might divorce him, because the kids are asking for things that he can’t give them,” said Hilda, 32. “I was planning on separating when we had moved back and forth, but I have faith in him.”

Teary-eyed, Jose mutters that the truckers who have returned to work are crippling the movement.

“I wish they hadn’t,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”