Close to 1000 truckers have established a blockade of the Port of Oakland on the West Coast of the United States, aggravating the already-existing supply chain crisis.

Most sensationalized by the media has been the demand to repeal California Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), a recently implemented state law making it more difficult for a worker to qualify as an independent contractor. Many companies misclassify their employees as independent contractors in order to circumvent the relatively strict rules on employee rights and wages.

Also at issue for truckers, ironically enough (and predictably glossed over or ignored by the bourgeois media), are workers’ rights and wages.

In Houston, TX, truckers who are classified as owner-operators but only work under the authority of HUDD/Maersk (a large carrier) have halted work in protest of their employer’s mistreatment of workers. Their demands include improvements to pay rates and fuel surcharges (extra money for drivers to compensate for above-average fuel prices), as well as better communication between the carrier and drivers. Truckers across the country face similar conditions.

Clarity on this phenomenon requires an understanding of the fact that the category of “truckers” spans diverse social strata.

A majority of truckers are “owner-operators”, meaning they (theoretically) own their own truck(s) and operate their own small business transporting goods. AB 5 will force many owner-operators to seek work with a large carrier as an employee, while others will have to pay substantially more for licenses and insurance so as to remain “independent”.

Prior to 1980, the trucking industry was heavily unionized, in particular by the Teamsters. Truckers had obtained high standards for their jobs through their militancy. The Reagan administration subsequently deregulated the industry and broke the power of the unions, cultivating a new system based on owner-operators, who are fragmented and more easily exploitable.

While some truckers prosper as owner-operators, every one of them first has to accumulate the capital necessary to purchase their own truck.

A large proportion of owner-operators are working under “lease-to-own” agreements with large carriers, whereby they deliver exclusively under the authority of the company while making regular payments on the truck until it’s completely paid off. In the meantime, they have no ownership rights, they cannot choose their jobs or customers, and they’re unable to negotiate their pay. Some truckers fall into serious debt with the carrier; the most unfortunate become trapped, perpetually crushed beneath the weight of their employer.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been involved in organizing truckers, but for the union to properly negotiate for higher wages and better working conditions, and to cement those gains in a contract, it’s necessary that truckers be reclassified as employees - hence Teamsters support for AB 5.

Around 100 International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers at the Port of Oakland have expressed solidarity with the truckers by refusing to cross the “picket line”.

Despite reservations regarding the mixing of classes and widespread belief in the false promise of individual entrepreneurship, any action towards the unity of all proletarians - as opposed to betrayal of the truckers, stoking division between workers - is commendable. As Engels put it in a letter to Wischnewetsky in 1886: “It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines.”

Nevertheless, we urge those truckers exploited by the lease-to-own system to reject the reactionary “American Dream” of owning their own small business (which will never be realized in a satisfactory way for most truckers); to advance demands centered on wages and working conditions above all else; and to organize as employees into a proper combination of wage-laborers against the large carriers, in order to conquer the behemoths rather than abandon the battlefield and allow future generations to go through the same tribulations. Do not ride the coattails of the most privileged section of the truckers - lead the movement for progress in the trucking industry yourself.

Truckers should feel their power as they stand together as one. The word “independent” in “independent contractor” means separation from your fellow truckers; competition between workers means a race to the bottom in terms of job standards. The only truly progressive independence is the independence of the proletariat from all other classes.

Finally, truckers should answer the solidarity of the port workers, who are currently engaged in their own battle for their livelihoods, by growing closer to their class brethren, unifying workers’ struggles above the division of labor. A real win can only be achieved by the working class in its entirety, moving as a single body. The first step in that direction is unity between truckers and other workers of the supply chain, with whom they interface daily at work.