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Friends,
We are so proud to share that the new book from longtime New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse dedicates an entire chapter to LAANE's work!
Out today, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor is an in-depth look at working men and women in America, the challenges they face, and how they can be re-empowered.
Below, please enjoy an excerpt from the chapter titled "How Los Angeles Became Pro-Labor."
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In Solidarity,
Roxana Tynan
LAANE Executive Director
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Of all the worker advocacy groups in the nation, LAANE has been the most effective in allying itself with green groups to help both workers and the environment. For example, in 2005, sixteen thousand trucks rumbled each day into the neighboring Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach—together the nation's largest seaport—often waiting hours to pick up goods, spewing diesel particulates and befouling neighboring communities. Angry residents and environmentalists demanded that the ports require a new generation of cleaner trucks that would cut pollution by 90 percent. All these new trucks would cost nearly $2 billion, and it was unclear who would pay for them.
LAANE joined with environmental groups to analyze the situation. Most port truck drivers couldn't afford the more than $100,000 to buy new-generation trucks. Eighty-eight percent of the drivers were independent contractors, and although they grossed $75,000 a year on average, they netted just $29,000 after factoring in fuel, insurance, and other costs. Their pay averaged just $12 an hour.
LAANE, with strong support with L.A.'s then mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, teamed up with environmental groups to develop an ingenious clean air plan that the two ports adopted in 2008. The ports required that within five years only new-generation trucks could be used. The ports levied a supplemental $35 fee per shipping container and then used the money from that levy to provide loans and subsidies to help companies and drivers buy new trucks. In addition, the Port of Los Angeles required trucking companies to treat their drivers as employees, not independent contractors. This meant that the trucking companies would have to pay for overtime and cover many of the truckers' costs, including fuel and insurance. It also enabled the truckers to unionize.
By 2013, truck pollution at the ports had dropped by 90 percent. But a federal appeals court ruled that the Port of Los Angeles couldn't require trucking companies to treat their drivers as employees. That was a huge blow to many drivers who once again found themselves as low-paid independent contractors. As employees, many were earning enough to pay down the debt on their new trucks, but as contractors many were soon in default. Fortunately, LAANE and several lawyers got California's labor commissioner, Julie Su, to rule that trucking companies had been illegally misclassifying more than fifteen hundred drivers as independent contractors. Those rulings increased those drivers' pay and bargaining power (although the labor commissioner's ruling didn't cover all trucking companies and drivers.)
As innovative as this port trucking effort was, LAANE's campaign to improve L.A.'s waste-hauling industry was arguably more imaginative. In 2011, city officials were alarmed that the main garbage landfill in L.A. would soon reach capacity. They were also upset that the private-sector waste haulers that served businesses and multifamily buildings, picking up 77 percent of the city's trash, recycled merely one-fifth of what they collected. Many Angelenos complained that trucks from seven or eight different waste-hauling companies would rumble down their streets each day, clogging roads, belching pollution, and endangering pedestrians. At the time, the city's 125 trash haulers won contracts by submitting the lowest bid (and often paying dismal wages.)
"Our commercial waste industry was the Wild West—there were no recycling standards, no job standards," said Greg Good, who was LAANE's point man on fixing the waste-hauling chaos. "The system incentivized a race to the bottom."
After nearly two years of studying the industry, LAANE and its environmental allies put forward a far-reaching plan to bring order to the chaos. Their plan called for dividing L.A. into eleven zones, with an exclusive waste-hauling franchise awarded for each zone through competitive bidding. To win a ten-year franchise, companies would have to pledge to use clean trucks, recycle a high percentage of trash, pay a living wage, assure safe working conditions, and promise not to oppose unionization. The plan was called Don't Waste L.A.
Before going public with the plan, LAANE published a twenty-six-page research report that examined the waste industry's problems. "You can't come into city hall with a half-baked idea and hope to succeed," Good said. For months, he and Adrian Martinez, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, attended meetings in dozens of California communities to learn how their trash collection systems worked. "If you want to get something done, LAANE is the go-to group," Martinez said. "They're successful because they find areas where environmental and community groups can really alight with them on environmental matters and on unjust practices that harm workers."
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LAANE is a leading advocacy organization dedicated to building a new economy for all. Combining dynamic research, innovative public policy and the organizing of broad alliances, LAANE promotes a new economic approach based on good jobs, thriving communities, and a healthy environment.
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