Port Truck Drivers Demand Union Recognition
Source: Workers Independent News
Two weeks after L.A. County supervisors unanimously voted to address wage theft claims from independent port truckers, drivers at one drayage company are demanding union recognition. Reporter Monica Lopez files this report:
[Monica Lopez]: Drivers for Intermodal Bridge Transport are requesting the company recognize the teamsters as their exclusive bargaining representative. IBT driver Davis Teofilo was among the truckers who hand-delivered the petition to the Assistant Vice President on Friday morning:
[Davis Teofilo]: any of us can actually leave here with the experience that we got and go to another company that has a union already thats established that they dont have to deal with all of whats going on here. But that doesnt do anything for the company and for any other new drivers that come in. Theyre going to be treated the same way that weve been getting treated all of these years.
[Monica Lopez]: A change in the way drivers are treated would include being reclassified as employees instead of independent contractors. Teofilo is also party to a pending lawsuit seeking employee reclassification and a settlement for alleged wage theft. In May, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors directed county staff to draw up a plan to address wage theft claims in response to testimony from port truck driverssome of whom ended up with negative paychecks after work-related deductions by their companies. IBT is one of four drayage companies at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach that truckers picketed in late April.
Monica Lopez, Workers Independent News, Wilmington.
Read more: http://laborradio.org/2015/06/port-truck-drivers-demand-union-recognition/
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)Good to see workers waking up
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)Their jobs (as will mine) will be replaced by automated cars and trucks within the next decade or so.
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/companies/chartist-shipping-robotics.fortune/
Shipping ports go high-tech
Maasvlakte II will be home to the world's most sophisticated loading and unloading operations. APM Terminals, a subsidiary of shipping giant Maersk, is building the first-ever remote-operated seaside crane, where an operator in a nearby office will unload the ship using a joystick and video screens. It will also incorporate driverless vehicles that can drop off cargo by themselves without waiting for a crane, another first, and will completely shut off whole sections of the terminal to regular human-driven vehicles. Once completed, it will be the most heavily automated ever built. The planned result? Fewer accidents, lower costs, and a 50% increase in operating efficiency.
The terminal's managing director, Frank Tazelaar, says the APMT's operation will be able to handle 2.7 billion twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) per year when it opens, and will eventually process 4.5 million per year TEU once it gets going. The entire Port of Rotterdam moved about 12 million TEU last year.
The new terminals are a big step forward (especially when compared to the antiquated U.S. port infrastructure), but even more automation is on the horizon. In coming years, expect better cranes, conveyor belts, and even fewer human operators.
~ snip ~
[hr]
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/01/27/how-ubers-autonomous-cars-will-destroy-10-million-jobs-and-reshape-the-economy-by-2025-lyft-google-zack-kanter/
How Ubers Autonomous Cars Will Destroy 10 Million Jobs And Reshape The Economy by 2025
January 27, 2015 3:02 PM - Commentary By Zack Kanter @zackkanter, Entrepreneur and Futurist
The transition is already beginning to happen. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO, says that their 2015 models will be able to self-drive 90 percent of the time. And the major automakers arent far behind according to Bloomberg News, GMs 2017 models will feature technology that takes control of steering, acceleration and braking at highway speeds of 70 miles per hour or in stop-and-go congested traffic. Both Google and Tesla predict that fully-autonomous cars what Musk describes as true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination will be available to the public by 2020.
Industry experts think that consumers will be slow to purchase autonomous cars while this may be true, it is a mistake to assume that this will impede the transition. Morgan Stanleys research shows that cars are driven just 4% of the time,5 which is an astonishing waste considering that the average cost of car ownership is nearly $9,000 per year. Next to a house, an automobile is the second most expensive asset that most people will ever buy it is no surprise that ride sharing services like Uber and car sharing services like Zipcar are quickly gaining popularity as an alternative to car ownership. It is now more economical to use a ride sharing service if you live in a city and drive less than 10,000 miles per year. The impact on private car ownership is enormous: a UC-Berkeley study showed that vehicle ownership among car sharing users was cut in half. The car purchasers of the future will not be you and me cars will be purchased and operated by ride sharing and car sharing companies.
And current research confirms that we would be eager to use autonomous cars if they were available. A full 60% of US adults surveyed stated that they would ride in an autonomous car, and nearly 32% said they would not continue to drive once an autonomous car was available instead. But no one is more excited than Uber drivers take home at least 75% of every fare. It came as no surprise when CEO Travis Kalanick recently stated that Uber will eventually replace all of its drivers with self-driving cars.
~ snip ~