Project Background

Clean and Safe Ports

Creating Good Jobs, Healthy Communities and a Sustainable Environment at the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach
Nothing is more important to the creation of a new economy than ensuring that our major industries provide good jobs while safeguarding our environment and the health of our communities. LAANE’s Clean and Safe Ports Project not only is a major step forward in the effort to rebuild our region’s middle class and reduce pollution in Southern California, but points the way towards a new future for one of the largest economic sectors in the country.

Over the past several years, LAANE and its labor, environmental and community partners in the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports have made great strides in the effort to transform a low-road port trucking industry that has fueled poverty jobs and a growing ecological crisis. Last fall, the Port of Los Angeles launched the Clean Trucks Program, which set landmark labor and environmental standards for trucking companies that haul goods to and from the largest port in the country. The program removes diesel-spewing trucks from the road and replaces them with clean-burning vehicles, while requiring that trucking companies make their drivers employees rather than underpaid, unprotected independent contractors.

Implementation of the Clean Trucks Program has been slowed by legal challenges from the trucking industry, which is determined to try and block progress for drivers and communities affected by diesel pollution. But when the program is fully in place, the changes will be profound: more than 10,000 truck drivers will see major improvements in their working conditions, and at the same time port communities that have endured severe health impacts from the dirty trucks will benefit from a dramatic reduction in pollution-related illness and death.

The implications of the Clean and Safe Ports Project extend far beyond Southern California. The Clean Trucks Program has already become a national model for similar efforts at the ports of Oakland, New York and New Jersey, Seattle and South Florida.

The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports is now leading an effort to amend federal legislation that prohibits states and local governments from regulating motor carriers. Environmental groups, unions, community groups, ports, legislators and others are coming together to demand that ports across the country be granted the right to solve their own local problems and to set local standards that improve conditions for workers, communities and the environment.