Seattle Haulers Park Rigs

Some 120 miles to the south of Vancouver, British Columbia, hundreds of Seattle container haulers, encouraged by the success of their Canadian counterparts, have parked their trucks in protest against low wages and the lack of union representation.

As in Vancouver, truckers at Seattle and Tacoma said the pay-per-load system encourages the practice of rate-cutting and regularly keeps them stuck waiting unpaid for hours. They also said there is no incentive to reduce the congestion at the port when drivers are paid by the load.

Owner-operators at the Port of Vancouver returned to work Aug. 23 after approving a deal with carriers that included the hourly wage system they sought. The drivers had conducted a nearly month-long job action in order to secure the deal.

It is the first major labor victory for port truckers on this continent who have seen their earning power and quality of life deteriorate over the past twodecades. For this reason, port officials and drivers on the West Coast have been keeping a close eye on the dispute.

“I’ve been working on this organizing campaign for the last year, and the skepticism was always that owner-operators were independent and couldn’t pull together,” said Gretchen B. Donart, communications organizer at Seattle Union Now, an AFL-CIO-affiliated group.

“Vancouver demonstrated drivers could hang together for three long weeks and tell the carriers that they needed to step up to the plate for an hourly wage. That was an inspiration to the drivers here.

hat and the fear of scab cargo coming to Seattle from Canada.”

For the full story, see the August 30 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.