On Monday, dozens of truck owner-operators rallied in the Port of Oakland, California. For more than a week, truckers have been at the port to demand they be exempted from California State Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), which was passed to reclassify independent contractors as company employees. The rule was nominally to protect Uber and Lyft drivers from extreme exploitation, but under the current interpretation, most of California's 70,000 truck owner-operators will be forced to take on onerous additional costs and administrative work as a result of the law, sell their trucks and become employees of larger companies or leave the state.
The protests last week shut down most port operations, resulting in an ultimatum from the port operators threatening truckers with arrest if they continued to block terminal gates. Although the demonstration Monday was smaller than the hundreds who gathered last week, truckers remain determined.
On Monday, the truckers participating in the Port of Oakland rally began assembling at 7:00 a.m. A heavy police presence kept the port open, with truckers told to remain in designated “free speech zones” or face arrest. The port managers designated four of these areas in reaction to truckers’ blockades of entrances, which found support from many dockworkers who refused to cross the truckers’ picket line. Across the West Coast, 22,000 dockworkers are being kept on the job by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union without a contract.
The organization of the protests have been largely ad hoc, and protesting owner-operators have refrained from identifying leaders, partially out of concern that they will be victimized as in past struggles. George, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, explained that the leader of a 2005 trucker action was subject to intimidation by the ports, including a legal subpoena. Speaking of an earlier action, George continued, “The Port of Oakland sued the leader in 1999 for $1.5 million.”
Tom, another owner-operator whose name has been changed, gave an example of corruption among former trucker protest leaders. “Ten years ago, we all gave money to get a lawyer, $100 or $200 each. The leader took the money and we never got the lawyer.”
Solomon, a truck owner-operator from Eritrea with three years’ experience, spoke out against this antidemocratic attack on truckers’ freedom of speech and assembly. “This is the place allowed for the truckers to continue their protest,” he said, pointing to the paper sign posted on an orange plastic barricade surrounded by caution tape, “but this is ridiculous. You see ‘Free Speech Zone.’ You don't need a zone to speak freely. You should speak freely anywhere and everywhere.”
Read the rest of the interview here. To see a video interview with Solomon click here.