Press Release
What: Nationwide Port Truck Driver Shutdown
Justice for the Oakland 3!
Recognize our employment status and collective bargaining rights!
When: Beginning Monday morning and possibly going all week
Where:
East Coast: ALL ports will be closed, special interest Charleson, Savannah, rail lines as well.
Gulf: Barbour’s Cut in LaPorte (Houston), Tejas
West Coast: Solidarity picketing initially and possible shutdown development as well.
Oakland: Significant interest as truck drivers have been hit by injunctions and other legal attacks. Non-truck drivers will have a solidarity picket line.
Who: Truck drivers that move containers to and from the ports of this nation. There is also growing community support to clean up the shipping industry as will be seen in Oakland outside of the APL terminal and at many port picket lines.
As many as 50,000 may participate in this wildcat action.
Why: The transportation system is broken and it must be fixed. The trucking modal is the most vulnerable and the shipping industry has bled it dry. There is NO way for it to be fixed without direct federal government intervention to control the foreign shipping lines that run our Ports. National Security issue?
Sponsor: NONE! Spontaneous combustion created by the environment and the abuses by the shipping lines. Nextel www.nextel.com 2-way radios were used to pull together truck drivers from around the nation.
News reference: April 30, 2004 shutdown in the State of California, in particular, Oakland and Los Angeles, and Virginia.
Resources:
http://www.iww.org/unions/iu530/truckers/ http://www.teamster.org/04news/hn_040617_6.htm http://www.truckline.com/insideata/press/062504_ports.html www.joc.com Tuesday’s edition
www.cunninghamreport.com Last week
Disclaimer: Please do not give any credit to any organization or individual for this Nationwide Shutdown. Give credit where it is due, blame Prez. Bush for spending billions in our tax dollars to SSA to run the Umm Qasr harbor in Iraq and allows SSA and other terminal operators and their clients, the foreign shipping lines, to rape our own harbors. It will stop this week!