Senators demand end to ‘shameful’ abuse of truckers Brett Murphy
Retailers have duty to ensure drivers are treated well, they say
A group of high-profile Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Dianne Feinstein, wrote letters to the nation’s top retail CEOs Monday demanding they crack down on trucking companies that turned their workers into modern-day indentured servants.
The call to action comes after a year-long USA TODAY Network investigation that found port trucking companies in California forced their drivers into debt, pressured them to work up to 20 hours a day and paid them pennies an hour.
“As a major U.S. corporation,” the senators wrote, “you also have a role to play in ensuring that you are not complicit in the mistreatment of port truck drivers and that American consumers, your customers, are not unwittingly supporting labor abuses in the United States.”
Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Kamala Harris of California joined Warren and Feinstein on Monday’s letter to 16 retail brands, including Target, Walmart and Costco. They asked each CEO to answer a series of questions about their knowledge of labor violations in the port trucking industry and about their plans to cut ties with those companies.
Together, the four senators represent powerful voices around labor, immigration and corporate
malfeasance.
Warren, of Massachusetts, famously took on Wall Street after the real estate collapse in 2008 and transformed her popularity as a consumer crusader into a Senate bid. California’s Feinstein is the ranking Democrat on the powerful Judiciary committee.
“Port trucking companies’ brazen disregard for federal transportation safety standards and workers’ safety and rights is shameful,” they wrote in Monday’s letter. They pledged to “pursue aggressively all federal avenues to put an end to this rampant mistreatment of port truck drivers.”
Since USA TODAY Network published its investigation in June, elected officials across the country have been pressing for action.
Dozens of lawmakers from the Los Angeles City Council to Capitol Hill have denounced the business practices, many of them calling on retail corporations to better police their trucking contractors.
Target, which has called the mistreatment of workers in its supply chain “unacceptable,” declined to comment. Other retailers contacted Monday afternoon by USA TODAY did not have an immediate response.
As they investigated the port trucking industry, reporters contacted two dozen retail companies, including Target, Costco and LG, that have used port trucking companies with labor violations. The few that responded said they were either unaware of widespread violations or not responsible for monitoring the maze of contractors and subcontractors in their shipping operation.
Now, some companies say they are taking steps to identify any abusive companies in their supply chain.
“We’re investigating this issue directly with carriers,” Home Depot spokesman Stephen Holmes said. Holmes pointed out that Home Depot has changed trucking companies and no longer uses any companies named in the USA TODAY investigation.
Over the past month, elected officials have met with experts and labor union leaders to discuss new laws that could curb abuse in the industry. And they’ve begun publicly pressuring federal Department of Transportation regulators to better coordinate with state officials to ferret out predatory labor practices.
Rep. Grace Napolitano, D- Calif., said she’s working with Reps. Peter DeFazio, D- Ore., and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to resurrect a federal bill, the Clean Ports Act, that would give states and cities the power to better enforce labor laws and standards in the port trucking industry.
In California, state Rep. Ricardo Lara said he’s drafting another bill to tweak California law so companies would have to disclose how they audit their operations at American ports.
California law already requires big companies doing business in the state to disclose what efforts they make to monitor their supply chain overseas. But retailers are not required to apply those standards to their U.S. shipping operations.
“We can’t ignore the reality of what’s happening in our backyard,” Lara said.
Federal lawmakers have called regulators to begin working with state officials to crack down on labor law violators.
Hundreds of California drivers have testified in state labor cases that they were cheated out of wages. Many described potential crimes, including managers who coerced them to work past the legal limit of hours and doctor logs, at times physically preventing workers from going home. But that information has not led to criminal investigations at the federal or state level.
The USA TODAY Network’s investigation focused on trucking companies around Los Angeles, where two ports are responsible for about half of all imports brought into the country.
In 2008, California officials ordered trucking companies at the ports to replace old big rigs with cleaner trucks. The companies pushed that cost onto drivers with a lease-to-own program, forcing many drivers to work around the clock. When they got sick or fell behind on payments, companies fired them, seizing their trucks and thousands they had paid in.
Company owners deny the claims made by their drivers, arguing most drivers are successful, and those who aren’t have the freedom to quit.
“We can’t ignore the reality of what’s happening in our backyard.” California state Rep. Ricardo Lara