As the new President and the new Congress take up the question of how to kick-start the economy, it’s important to note that not all jobs are created equal.
The old thinking was that it was impossible to grow the economy and clean the environment at the same time. The green jobs movement has done important work in freeing the world from the tyranny of that particular dead idea; thanks to their efforts, there’s a lot of people thinking hard about how to apply the stimulus in ways that grow green jobs.
But green jobs are not, in and of themselves, good jobs. They can be good jobs - jobs that provide workers with decent wages, economic security and a shot at the American Dream - but they can just as easily go the other way. It all depends on the choices we make.
Because of this, it’s crucial that we find real-life examples of programs that have created jobs that are both green and good. In a piece in today’s Huffington Post, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute, point to one sector where just such a transformation is taking place: port trucking.
With President Obama’s administration urging Congress to pass an economic stimulus quickly, political leaders should waste no time pointing to a smart, stable source of green job growth: port trucking. If we reverse years of dangerous deregulation, thousands of new low-paying jobs could quickly become sustainable middle-class jobs. This is especially true in New York…
A majority of these port truckers are recent immigrants with no negotiating power or workplace rights. Their lives are dictated by ocean shipping lines and trucking companies trying to get maximum productivity at minimal expense. These drivers have to pay for their own truck maintenance, fuel, road taxes, tire insurance and tolls. They are covered neither by workers’ compensation nor by any labor legislation that protects fair wages, hours, occupational safety or health.
They’re not the only victims of the system. The Rutgers study reveals how the structure of the trucking industry passes off huge labor and environmental costs to the rest of us. Ordinary citizens are paying for the environmental effects of diesel emissions, for the health care of drivers and their families who can’t afford insurance and for the congestion on freight routes that often run through residential neighborhoods.
Port truck drivers operating with such low profit margins are most likely to use the least expensive trucks available, older and far more polluting than newer, cleaner trucks. The cheapest trucks emit the most dangerous fumes in neighborhoods closest to the ports, making the air increasingly toxic and causing severe spikes in asthma rates.
As Batista and Nadler note, New York would not be breaking new ground if it created a clean truck program for its ports; the port of Los Angeles began just such a project last year:
Today, 80 percent of the truck drivers servicing the Port of Los Angeles are independent-owner operators. These drivers earn on average, after subtracting truck-related expenses, $29,600 annually, or about $12 an hour. This hourly wage is only two-thirds of what employee-drivers earn. Additionally, surveys of truck drivers at the Port of Los Angeles show that 90 percent of drivers do not have health insurance of any kind and only five percent have retirement benefits.
The Clean Truck Program will change that. It requires that any trucking company operating at the port use only employee-drivers. The trucking companies would be responsible for updating and maintaining truck fleets that comply with the port’s clean truck standards…
The Clean Truck Program shifts the burden of environmental justice from those least likely to bear it, truck drivers, to those who are most able to bear it, ocean shipping lines. These large global operations will be much more able to absorb the costs that for too long have been shifted onto the communities surrounding the ports in the form of environmental degradation and negative health impacts. In the process, port drivers will also get their share of labor justice as well.
The pioneering work being done in California’s ports has won praise from a wide range of progressive leaders — including President Barack Obama.
As America begins to look for ways to stimulate the economy and clean the environment, taking the lessons that have been learned in California and applying them in New York — and across the nation — should be high on the agenda.