Los Angeles GMB

Whereas increasing numbers of working class and dispossessed people in the United States have begun to meet face to face to proclaim their opposition to economic injustice and define their interests in democratic popular assemblies, autonomous from political parties, as part of the Occupy Movement, which resonates deeply with the IWW's traditions and principles, and

Whereas millions of working class and dispossessed people around the world, but especially in Northern Africa and Western Asia, have been organizing themselves to overthrow the governments that enforce the capitalist and neocolonial domination and exploitation they have resisted for generations, and

Whereas the IWW has stood since its founding in 1905 for the proposition that:

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth." and

Whereas since 2006 the tradition of the movement for the rights of migrant workers in the U.S. has been to mobilize themselves and their allies for mass actions on May 1 to disrupt the functioning of the economic system and political discourse of the 1%, and

Whereas every year May Day is celebrated globally as International Workers Day to commemorate the struggle of the international working class to emancipate itself through the class war over the centuries, and

Whereas May Day 1890 was proclaimed to be an international day of working class protest by the Second International against the repression of the 8 Hour Day movement in the U.S. where 8 mostly immigrant anarchist labor organizers were arrested, with 4 being hanged and one committing suicide the night before the hangings, after an unknown person threw a bomb at police who were repressing a protest against police brutality in Haymarket Square in Chicago, and

Whereas the Los Angeles branch of the IWW welcomes this opportunity to organize alongside OccupyLA and other participants in the Los Angeles General Strike Coalition to help the working class build the skills, the community, and the combativeness necessary to defend ourselves, our elders, and the generations to come from the global threats of austerity, exploitation, imperialism and ecocide.

Be it resolved that the LA Branch of the IWW endorses the May 1, 2012 General Strike and commits to work as part of the Los Angeles General Strike Coalition by conducting trainings and participating in actions in the lead up to May 1.

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW. The image pictured to the right did not appear in the original article, we have added it here to provide a visual perspective. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

Before sunrise on a Monday morning, outside a sterile office park in Compton, a convoy of small, beat-up cars, none of them newer than 1995, arrives at the offices of the trucking firm Calko Speedline. One by one, the car's drivers emerge, ranchera and mariachi and est?s escuchando a Piol?n por la ma?ana! competing from their radios. They buy coffee from the taco truck that follows them in, and assemble in small groups, huddled in circles among their big rigs - hulking red, green, blue and white mammoths lined up along the curb, their diesel-burning engines grumbling into action one by one.

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW.  The image pictured to the right did not appear in the original article, we have added it here to provide a visual perspective. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines. 

By Tatiana Prophet - Victorville Daily Press, November 14, 2007 - 8:16PM

HESPERIA — Bobby Powell spent $650 to fill up his big rig the other day, while it normally costs him $450. That’s enough fuel for about a day and a half of driving.

“I’m not making near the money I was,” said the truck driver as he passed through Hesperia on Wednesday afternoon.

Like many truck drivers, Powell owns his own truck and pays for his own fuel.

Fuel prices are just one of many concerns facing independent owner-operators at the close of this year.

Another is the new identification card required to pick up and drop off cargo at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles — the Transportation Workers Identification Credential — which officials plan to roll out as early as December.

Economist John Husing, a consultant to the ports, said the TWIC card might exclude between 15 and 22 percent of truck drivers — for either a criminal record or immigration violations, according to a survey recently conducted.

On top of that, the ports are considering new environmental regulations that would ban all trucks manufactured before 1989 at the ports, according to several sources.

The ports are in meetings to determine what kind of subsidy, if any, might be offered to truckers so they can buy new trucks.

“Nobody knows because the program’s not finalized,” Husing said. “There are major issues that have not been decided yet: Will the drivers be allowed to continue working as independent operators or will the drivers as part of the clean truck program be required to sell their trucks or become employees?”

Port truckers are some of the lowest paid in the industry, Husing said. Many truckers live throughout Southern California, including the High Desert.

And while the problems are many, the solutions are certainly not unified.

One union, the Industrial Workers of the World, is calling for a truckers shutdown on Monday from Dallas to Los Angeles to commemorate the death of Joe Hill, a union organizer who was hanged in Utah in 1915.

“There’s all these meetings going on behind closed doors, and everybody’s interests are being represented at these meetings, and there’s nobody there representing them except us,” said Jay Brophy, a representative of IWW.

The Teamsters Union supports making all drivers employees of the freight companies once again, Husing said, as they once were. Brophy, of the IWW, agrees.

“They have to pay for the fuel, they have to pay for the maintenance, the company doesn’t pay for their unemployment, worker’s comp, income tax, all of this is left on them.”

Stuart Hoynak, another trucker stopping off in Hesperia, does not mind being independent, nor does he mind being fingerprinted for a TWIC card.

“That I understand,” he said. “We got to be safe. They should document everybody. I feel it’s a security measure.”

What he does mind are the fuel costs.

“It’s hard for everybody,” he said. “I mean, it’s a major cut in pay. We don’t get paid for sitting unless the wheels are turning. And every fuel hike is hundreds of dollars out of our paycheck, not a couple of pennies. So right now with the price of fuel, we’re losing anywhere from 1,000 dollars-plus every week. ... When the fuel goes up sometimes an average of 5 cents every two days. There is no reason. There is no reason. It’s crazy. Everybody’s making a lot of money.”

Art Wong, spokesman for the Port of Long Beach, said he was not aware of a shutdown being planned.

But he acknowledged that big changes are ahead, both with the clean trucks initiative and the TWIC card.

“It will be a big change no matter what we do. Even if we leave it alone, everybody’s going to have to get new trucks, and even if we offer grants, I don’t know if these guys are going to be able to afford new trucks.”

About 40 percent of all goods entering the United States come through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Any strike related to the ports can cost millions in lost time.

In 2002, a dispute between longshoremen and terminal operators resulted in the loss of about $1 million a day for the Los Angeles/Long Beach ports, according to trade magazine Land Line.