Cargo containers began shifting once more by means of California’s Port of Oakland on Monday after unbiased truck drivers stood down from protests that successfully shut down one of many West Coast’s largest ports for nearly per week.
Officials on the personal operators of Oakland’s transport terminals mentioned they had been clearing backlogs of ships and packing containers that had grown for the reason that truckers started blocking the port’s gates early final week, bringing operations to a standstill to protest a brand new California “gig economy” regulation.
Bill Aboudi, president of trucking firm Oakland Port Services Corp., mentioned he tried to make appointments to choose up containers early Monday however the earliest slot out there was Tuesday evening.
“It’s just everybody trying to cram a week’s worth of work into one day, just doesn’t work,” Mr. Aboudi mentioned. “Nothing will be normal for another few weeks.”
Activity first resumed slowly on Saturday when protesters didn’t flip up throughout the port’s restricted weekend hours. By Monday with enterprise ramping up once more, gates had been clear and vans had been shifting.
The port, in what it referred to as an open letter to the truckers issued late Thursday, mentioned truckers against the brand new state regulation ought to confine protests to designated zones and warned that anybody blocking gates could possibly be “cited and penalized” by police. A spokesman for California Gov.
Gavin Newsom,
a Democrat, mentioned on the time that truckers ought to “focus on supporting this transition” to the brand new regulation.
“For one week, the police didn’t act. But today, they threatened to act,” Able Zerfiel, one of many protesters, mentioned Monday. “They’re even going to give us tickets for parking our little cars. So we leave our cars in the public park and we walk down to the free-speech zone to show our insignia.”
Mr. Zerfiel mentioned protesters had been sustaining a presence with out blocking the gates.
The truckers are protesting the brand new regulation, often known as AB5, that toughens the definition of unbiased contractors. Although the regulation went into impact for a variety of professions in 2020, a authorized problem by the trucking sector has held up enforcement within the trucking business.
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to assessment the case, sending it again to a state courtroom and doubtlessly permitting California to start imposing the regulation if it will get the go-ahead from that courtroom.
Some of an estimated 70,000 unbiased truckers in California say they like to work as what the sector calls owner-operators however that the regulation would make it prohibitively costly to stay unbiased.
Ed DeNike,
president of SSA Containers, which owns the terminal that handles about 70% of the cargo getting into and leaving the Port of Oakland, mentioned the SSA facility had virtually run out of room to deal with packing containers.
“The problem was we were trying to work ships and taking containers off the ships and putting them in the yard and no one was picking up,” mentioned Mr. DeNike, whose firm usually handles about 8,000 to 9,000 containers weekly. “But now we’re open. They can start picking up containers. That’ll help give us more capacity in the yard.”
Write to Akiko Matsuda at [email protected]
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