Blue-Green Alliance Movement Moves Forward
| By Elliott D. Petty - Sep 11, 2008 11:49:13 AM PT |
| Also listed in: Courage Campaign Staff |
Southern Californians who live near the nation's busiest trade hubs, known as the Ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach moved one step closer to breathing cleaner air as a federal judge refused to halt the implementation of the nation's most sweeping environmental cleanups in recent memory known as the landmark Clean Air and Clean Trucks Program championed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The new program mandates that only clean-fuel powered cargo trucks be allowed to service the ports. The Los Angeles program (but no Long Beach) also shifts the responsibility for ownership and upkeep of the clean-burning vehicles to the trucking companies, while also requiring that drivers become employees of these companies rather than their current misleading status as independent contractors - a move that will lead to significant increases in job standards and ensure basic workplace protections.
Long Beach, fearing a lawsuit from the trucking industry and the shippers punked out of the employee provision moved by L.A. It's Mayor, Bob Foster told everyone he didn't want to be sued by the trade titans.
Sure enough, the industries still filed suit against Long Beach as well as L.A. In the end, a federal judge refused to grant an injunction preventing the Clean Air and Clean Trucks program from moving forward starting in October.
Let this week be remembered as a watershed accomplishment for the inspiring "blue-green alliance," a partnership of Organized Labor and the Environmental community. So often in the past, we have found these critical progressive institutions on opposite sides of public policy debates.
This cannot be underestimated, the notorious Teamsters Union working side by side with NRDC and local community groups. There is no doubt the new and powerful blue-green alliance can serve as a model for good jobs within a green growth economy across the nation.
Kudos to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for championing a program at the nation's busiest ports to benefit communities' long-suffering from polluted air and the drivers who literally transport America's consumer economy.
The new program mandates that only clean-fuel powered cargo trucks be allowed to service the ports. The Los Angeles program (but no Long Beach) also shifts the responsibility for ownership and upkeep of the clean-burning vehicles to the trucking companies, while also requiring that drivers become employees of these companies rather than their current misleading status as independent contractors - a move that will lead to significant increases in job standards and ensure basic workplace protections.
Long Beach, fearing a lawsuit from the trucking industry and the shippers punked out of the employee provision moved by L.A. It's Mayor, Bob Foster told everyone he didn't want to be sued by the trade titans.
Sure enough, the industries still filed suit against Long Beach as well as L.A. In the end, a federal judge refused to grant an injunction preventing the Clean Air and Clean Trucks program from moving forward starting in October.
Let this week be remembered as a watershed accomplishment for the inspiring "blue-green alliance," a partnership of Organized Labor and the Environmental community. So often in the past, we have found these critical progressive institutions on opposite sides of public policy debates.
This cannot be underestimated, the notorious Teamsters Union working side by side with NRDC and local community groups. There is no doubt the new and powerful blue-green alliance can serve as a model for good jobs within a green growth economy across the nation.
Kudos to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for championing a program at the nation's busiest ports to benefit communities' long-suffering from polluted air and the drivers who literally transport America's consumer economy.
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