June 16, 2006

It’s harder and harder to make a living driving the short-haul routes from the Port of Seattle to waiting trains or other depots for Pacer International, says Tesfaye Gudeta, who — like all the company’s “owner-operators” — is paid by the job, not the hour.

“It’s hard to take only $500 to the family” — about half what he made before Pacer’s recriminatory actions, says Gudeta, who has driven for the company for half of his six-year career.

The four months of harassment was joined on Tuesday with an early-morning visit by labor activists to Pacer’s Seattle offices. Thirty marchers, many from seagoing and waterfront unions like the Masters, Mates and Pilots and the ILWU, descended on Pacer’s south Seattle office, blowing whistles, waving signs, and chanting, “Pacer, Pacer, Shame on You!” Coordinated by Washington State Jobs with Justice, the crowd was there to deliver missives from the lawyers of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who are representing the aggrieved truckers. One letter, addressed to the local office manager, demanded that “all drivers be restored to their work schedules and work arrangements” and “be made whole for all retaliation and discrimination that has occurred.”

Since they’re technically owner-operators, the truckers can’t air their complaints before the National Labor Relations Board. They’re also hampered by their relative newness to the U.S.: most, says Gudeta, are immigrants like him, less likely to know their rights.

The workers thought they had what they termed a “morally binding” verbal agreement with Pacer’s management that they’d suffer no ill harm if they came back on the job.

Gudeta and some of his colleagues came to the management after what the workers say was a baseless dismissal of one of their own. “What happened to him could happen to us,” he remembers telling management, “so what is our safety?” He says Pacer representative Dan Chairbank promised no recriminations. But the workers say they happened anyway. An April 19 letter to the president and vice-president of operations at Pacer’s Los Angeles headquarters signed by 20 owner-operators gives a blow-by-blow chronology of how the office manager abolished seniority rules, ordered truckers to stand idle, and punished some for breaking rules while letting others’ transgressions slide — all with the intention of pinching the pocketbooks of those who had struck.

The letter also notes that the competitive environment of subcontracting leads some workers to frequently make “bogus complaints” about others — leading to disciplinary meetings that eat up working hours. Such false accusations are “designed to blame us and therefore take short-cut assignments at our expense.”

Most other short-haul brokers in the area are no better than Pacer, says Gudeta — they too reign over immigrant workers with fear. If anyone complains about mistreatment, says Gudeta, the response at the employers he’s been with is “‘If you don’t like it, you can go.’”

A spokesperson for Pacer could not be reached about the Tuesday morning action.