SCDigest Editorial Staff
SCDigest Says: |
"It'll be much easier for the Teamsters to organize these drivers," Paul Bingham, economics practice leader at Wilbur Smith Associates, said last week of the ruling.
Click Here to See Reader Feedback
|
In a high stakes legal battle, the US District Court for the Central District of California reversed its prior legal ruling and decided that the Port of Los Angeles has the right to impose a series of restrictions and requirements on drayage drivers serving the port, new rules nominally meant to reduce pollution. The American Trucking Association (ATA) opposed the regulations and led the legal efforts to have those regulations barred by the courts, and says it plans to appeal the ruling by Judge Christina Snyder.
On the surface, the issue may appear a narrow controversy over the specifics of what kind of vehicles can serve the Port of LA and other elements of local environmental policy. For example, the Port of LA, and initially the Port of Long Beach as well, issued rules two years ago forcing drayage operators to purchase an expensive “concession,” and comply with tough reporting requirements and other burdens, including replacing existing trucks if built before 2007. The Port of LA's rules would have effectively barred independent owner-operators from serving the port within 5 years by requiring all drivers to be employees of companies that have purchased the concessions.
"This victory bolsters the standing of burgeoning clean port programs across the nation," said Melissa Lin Perrella, an attorney with the Natural Resources and Defense Council. "This decision allows the Port of Los Angeles to continue introducing cleaner trucks while getting dirty ones off the road and sets the stage for healthier communities nationwide."
But as SCDigest had reported earlier this year and Perrella's statement implies, the case could set a legal precedent that overturns the long legal environment of federal not local regulation of the trucking industry. The ability of local jurisdictions to set trucking rules is now largely limited by Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA), which quite was created to avoid the chaos and costs that would result from different rules in hundreds of jurisdictions across the US.
The Port of Los Angeles had been fighting to change that status quo, nominally on environmental grounds. Others, including labor lobbyists (see below), are pushing to amend the FAAAA itself, also for what are said to be environmental aims.
For example, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York introduced a bill just last month seeking to change the federal law and give local ports the ability to set more of their own rules, saying his proposed Clean Ports Act will "ensure that future legal challenges do not impede environmental progress."
In the event of either a victory in the courts or changes in federal law, it could open the door to dozens or hundreds of local regulations on trucking, and potentially increase the level of unionization in the logistics industry, all of which will add logistics costs to shippers. By outright banning owner-operators or effectively forcing them out of port service through expensive or burdensome regulations, the alternative would be larger - and generally unionized - trucking firms, which many see being at least as big a factor in the port's new rules as environmental concerns. (See Port of LA, Clean Trucks, Owner-Operators, and You.)
“The biggest issue is that L.A. tried to ban independent owner-operators, obviously at the request of the Teamsters union, which would benefit hugely if it could narrow the competition down to a few big companies, then set out to organize them,” the Los Angeles Daily News wrote not long after this action began back in 2008.
(Transportation Management Article - Continued Below)
|