truck drivers

By Gina Jiménez - Inside Climate News, August 15, 2023

Around 4 million people in the U.S. work as contractors for app services like DoorDash delivering pizzas, salads and pad thai. Those in areas with extreme heat are taking new measures to keep working through it.

Jessica Fawcett wakes up at 5:30 a.m. so she can deliver groceries and take-out orders throughout Tempe, Arizona by 6:30 a.m. She has been working 12- to 14-hour shifts for Instacart and DoorDash since December, but lately, the heat in Tempe has been making them harder. 

Some days, Fawcett must walk 20 minutes or climb four floors of stairs in a 116-heat index just to deliver one order. “I joke and say I don’t need to go to the gym because I already walk a lot with this heat,” she says, “I have lost so much weight.” 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this year’s June was the hottest the Earth has ever registered, and last week the Copernicus Climate Change Service said July was the hottest month ever recorded. High temperatures have continued this month, and over 100 million Americans were under an extreme heat alert at some point during July.

Nevertheless, app delivery workers in states with extreme weather, like Arizona and Texas, have kept working. Some feel the consequences on their health, and others are changing their working hours and carrying around cold water to survive long shifts in the blistering heat. 

“It feels like you are standing in an air fryer or a microwave,” says Hector Mejía, a 30-year-old who has been working doing DoorDash deliveries in Phoenix for around a year. He compares heat these days in Arizona with standing next to a campfire. “It’s almost hard to breathe.” 

The number of people working for app delivery platforms in the U.S. has exponentially increased in the last few years, from just over one million in 2018 to over four million in 2021, a recently published study found. That represents almost three times Amazon’s global workforce. 

While some platform workers like the flexibility of the job, they are especially vulnerable to inclement weather, sickness or any situation that keeps them from working since as independent contractors, their livelihood depends on them being on the streets.

In New York City, app delivery workers have been fighting to get an hourly minimum wage, but in the rest of the country, organization efforts are scarce, said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of the Workers Justice Project, an organization that has supported app delivery workers in New York. 

By Claudia Irizarry Aponte and Samantha Maldonado - The City, July 27, 2023

UPS workers are turning up the heat on their employer after their union said at least six package delivery drivers in the New York City region experienced heat-related illness on the job during last week’s heat wave.

Chris Cappadonna, 26, says he sought emergency care for heat exhaustion an hour into his shift Thursday morning in Brooklyn. With outside temperatures nearing 100 degrees, he started experiencing difficulty breathing and cramped hands, he told THE CITY.

He said he was moving heavy furniture in Mill Basin and was “about to pass out” when two city sanitation workers, who apparently noticed he was struggling, stopped him and came to his aid.

They let Cappadonna sit in their air-conditioned truck to cool off, and he later went to an urgent care and then the emergency room at Mount Sinai Kings Highway, he said.

“I’ve been working for two years and I’ve never felt heat like that. That was crazy,” Cappadonna said. “It’s just not a good situation for anybody to be working in that heat.”

He and other workers say UPS management is not taking needed measures to protect them from the heat, whether that’s ensuring their trucks have fans or air conditioning, or giving them adequate breaks during heat waves.

By Siri Chilukuri - Grist, July 25, 2023

Climate change is creating dangerously hot conditions for construction workers, mail carriers, delivery drivers, airline workers, farmworkers, and more. Conditions that were previously uncomfortable are now unbearable, and the failure of companies — along with some state governments — to catch up to the new normal of heat has had deadly consequences. 

U.S. heat-related fatalities have increased in recent years, according to an NPR analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data that found the three-year average of worker heat deaths has doubled since the early 1990s. In the decade spanning 2011 to 2021, heat killed more than 436 people on the job. 

The myriad of factors that influence how heat is actually felt can be difficult to pin down, but a metric known as the heat index — which combines temperature and humidity — can get close. Last week’s heat index figures were eye-popping, reaching 119 degrees Fahrenheit in Corpus Christi, Texas, and 113 F in both Phoenix and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

“The heat index is what really worries me,” said Tevita ’Uhatafe, a former airlines-operation worker who’s now the vice president of the Texas chapter of the AFL-CIO union. “Because that’s what we’re actually dealing with when we’re working outside.” 

Airline-operations positions often mean working outdoors with limited shade. Plus, being surrounded by the sheet metal of airplanes and the concrete of the tarmac can make it even hotter during periods of extreme heat. Concrete, for example, can actually contribute to rising temperatures. 

By mid-century, a quarter of Americans will experience heat index temperatures above 125 F for at least one day a year, according to a statistical model by the nonprofit First Street Foundation. Areas surrounding the Texas-Mexico border will experience temperatures above 100 F for more than a third of the year. In addition, researchers from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the University of California Merced found that outdoor workers stand to lose more than $39.3 billion in income annually by the middle of the century from reduced hours due to heat risk. 

By Clara, Garfield, Daniel Kopp, Pablo John, Cellan Smith - Clara P Tipping Points, June 28, 2023

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 15, 2023

On June 14, the Teamsters and UPS agreed to tentative language to equip UPS vehicles with air conditioning systems, new heat shields, and additional fans, according to a union statement. The agreement will cover the 340,000 UPS workers who are members of the Teamsters union.

NBC News reports that temperature readings taken by workers in UPS trucks in Arizona and Florida have shown temperatures above 150 degrees. At least 145 UPS employees have been hospitalized for heat illnesses since 2015.

“Folks are super excited” about the heat agreement, said Zakk Luttrell, a UPS driver and union shop steward in Norman, Okla. “It’s not just about what’s cost effective and efficient anymore, it’s about keeping people alive.”

Meanwhile, 97% of UPS employees voting authorized a strike to start August 1. Such a strike would be the largest against a single employer in US history.

By Keith Richmond - Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, May 10, 2023

ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, has slammed the government’s decision to approve the use of longer lorries on Britain’s roads.

Mick Whelan, ASLEF’s general secretary, said: ‘There goes this government’s green agenda! We need to move more goods – as well as more people – off Britain’s roads and onto electrified rail if we are to have any hope of hitting our CO2 targets.

‘To encourage the use of longer, heavier, lorries will only mean more emissions, more deadly particles in the air that we breathe, and more danger – with the six extra feet, deadly tail swing, and a bigger area at the rear end when the truck is turning – for pedestrians, cyclists, and people in cars. It will mean more accidents, more injuries, and more deaths on our roads.

‘The government – which always bends its knee to the road lobby – claims it will mean more goods can be transported by fewer vehicles. In fact it will mean the same number of heavy goods vehicles on our roads – just longer, heavier, and more dangerous HGVs.’

Mick added: ‘This is, I’m afraid, a regressive, rather than progressive, measure. A retrograde step. Rather than permitting longer, and more dangerous, lorries, the government should be encouraging more freight to move to rail which we all know is a more efficient, safer, cleaner, and more environmentally friendly alternative.

‘Each freight train removes 129 lorries from our roads. We need more freight hubs right across the country so we let the train take the strain for the long haul, and then switch the goods to shorter, and more modern, electric vehicles for the last few miles. That’s the sort of forward-thinking, integrated, green transport system we need for the 21st century.’

By staff - National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, May 10, 2023

LOGISTICS UNION RMT slammed the government over plans to permit longer lorries to travel on UK roads despite the climate emergency and the managed decline of rail. There have also been widespread warnings that the move will increase the number of fatal road accidents.

Under government plans the lorries will be a maximum of 2.05 metres longer than the current standard sized trailer meaning lorries over 18.5 metres in length. 

The longer lorries have been trialled since 2011 and there are about 3,000 already on the roads, but from May 31 any business in England, Scotland or Wales will be able to use them.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said that it was completely baffling that the government had made the announcement on longer lorries despite the fact that the climate emergency was accelerating and the increasingly obvious managed decline of the rail including the freight sector. 

“Rail freight is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly way to move freight but instead over recent years what we are seeing on our railways is cutting investment, slashing services and staff numbers, scrapping and downgrading vital infrastructure projects and rewarding failed private train operators with lucrative contract extensions. 

“If this government was serious about tackling the climate emergency, they would recognise the critical importance of rail freight to reducing carbon emissions and commit to a historic mass investment in this sector to ensure the UK meets its legally binding climate targets,” he said.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 2022

A growing convergence between climate protection and worker justice is embodied in a new report from Warehouse Workers for Justice titled “For Good Jobs and Clean Air: How a Just Transition to Zero Emission Vehicles Can Transform Warehousing.”

Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ) is a worker center founded in 2008 to win “stable, living wage jobs with dignity” for the hundreds of thousands of workers in Illinois’ logistics and distribution industry. WWJ “provides workshops about workplace rights, unites warehouse workers to defend their rights on the job, builds community support for the struggles of warehouse workers and fights for public and private policies that promote full-time work at decent wages in the warehouse industry.”

The new report, which includes both scientific information and vivid accounts by warehouse workers themselves, documents the toxic, diesel-driven air quality, public health, and labor impacts of warehousing at the nation’s largest inland port, Will County, IL. Its findings were generated by community-driven air quality monitoring, truck counting, and interviews.

The report finds that through environmental racism and poor labor standards, companies like Amazon put their predominantly Black and Latine workers at a “double jeopardy” of exploitation on the shop floor and toxic air pollution in the community.

The report shows that the transition to electric trucks creates an opportunity to uplift labor standards for warehouse workers and truckers while mitigating diesel-related public health crises — but only if the shift to EVs adequately prioritizes workers and residents.

By DZ and Three Way Fight - It's Going Down, February 23, 2022

The author, DZ, has opted to use his initials because he is discussing active union business at his local. This article details actions and analysis in Vancouver. Meanwhile, as we go to publish, the police in Ottawa have stepped up the banning of the Convoy from areas around Parliament and the city. Attempts to stop the Convoy protests by police have now seen the police using chemical sprays and flash grenades with a growing number of the Convoy supporters being arrested – 3WF

The ongoing trucker convoy, which has occupied parts of downtown Ottawa and other neighborhoods for several weeks, has been met with a widespread sense of demoralization among the left (an equivocal term that I will disambiguate below). Participants in the convoy present themselves in opposition to vaccine mandates, but we must note that these actions are the latest iteration of a strategically and tactically fluid covid-denialist movement, which has manifest over the last two years as anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination, anti-mandate, and anti-mask. It is a movement which has also, from its very beginnings, drawn membership and support from far-right movements.

The Convoys

In what I follows, I will look at three smaller events that took place in Vancouver, British Columbia. The first two events I will examine are convoys. They were organized by a group called Action4Canada. On February 5th, a convoy billed as the “Langley Freedom Convoy” was disrupted by counter-protestors and cyclists, who blocked the convoy at several different intersections. The counter-protest was one of several actions organized to meet the smaller, mostly mobile trucker convoys in various cities across Canada. The express intent of the counter-protestors was to block intersections in order to reroute the convoy away from the hospitals in the Vancouver core. (Some intersections might also have been chosen to subsequently reroute the convoy away from the Downtown Eastside). Perhaps the most effective chokepoint occurred when cyclists blocked the convoy as it headed westbound on Terminal Avenue. As a local journalist pointed out, there’s a two-kilometer stretch of Terminal where drivers can’t exit down side streets, and at the end of that stretch they were blocked and deadlocked. The convoy had to reverse out with assistance of police. Some of the convoy made it downtown, and I have seen social media posts showing that they were blocked or rerouted (with different degrees of success) at no fewer than four different intersections.

Interestingly, the destination for the “3rd Lower Mainland Freedom Convoy” on February 12th was the 176 St. border crossing in Surrey, BC, far from the Vancouver city core. The change in destination may be an attempt to avoid the disruptions of counter-protests. The fact that these groups target border crossings and challenge the RCMP—at this particular event several vehicles successfully broke through police barricades—shows that while police sympathies for the covid-denialist movement are frequently documented in, for example, Ottawa, these convoys are willing to engage in system-oppositional actions.

Perhaps the safest observation—one made by many—about these events is that there is a stark contrast between the police response to convoy actions and those of leftist or Indigenous movements, which are typically suppressed long before they would reach a similar critical mass. On that note, the counter-protest action on February 5th might have been the strongest leftist action in the Vancouver region since the Wet’suwet’en solidarity blockades two years ago—though it did not match the scope or intensity of those actions.

By Jeff Shantz - libcom.com, February 17, 2022

Over the end of January and into the first weeks of February 2022, the Canadian state’s otherwise sleepy capital, Ottawa, became a focus of international attention as thousands of truckers and their supporters drove into the city as part of a far Right mobilization calling itself Freedom Convoy 2022. That such a large far Right force could occupy the downtown of a major city for weeks raised alarm among residents and observers and kicked of numerous questions and debates among anarchists, leftists, and working class people more generally. What was the makeup of the convoy? Were they actually working class? What did the mobilization say about the failures of unions and the political left? What sorts of organizing was required to counter the growth of the far Right in Canada over the last several years?

At the same time as the Freedom Convoy was organizing and then carrying out its occupation, other mobilizations of rank-and-file truckers were also taking place which targeted specific companies and making and winning demands that directly benefited truckers—with little to no media attention or discussion. These trucker mobilizations were organized by South Asian truckers (predominantly Punjabi) and they pose compelling models for rank-and-file organizing, and community solidarity, and real working class answers to the questions raised by the Freedom Convoy.

A Far Right Road Show