<\/a>Ricardo Ceja keeps detailed records of his payments. | Daina Beth Solomon<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cI was running around like a headless chicken,\u201d Ceja recalls. \u201cAnd people were very rude. There\u2019s a thousand trucks, but no one to talk to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dockworkers, rather than offering help, just bred tension.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey make more money, so they look at us like we\u2019re trash,\u201d says Ceja. \u201cYou can\u2019t say nothing to them because they\u2019ll literally kick you out. The supervisors are on their side, the security is on their side, everybody is on their side — and it\u2019s just you by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since July, nearly 20,000 dockworkers have manned their towering cranes and levers without a new contract. When negotiations similarly stalled in 2002 and employers accused the longshoremen of go-slow tactics, ports along the West Coast shut down for 10 days. Ceja says slow tactics have crept into the system yet again, frustrating truck drivers hoping for speedy, cost-effective deliveries.<\/p>\n
Ceja bears no grudge against the dockworkers, however. He recognizes that cooperation is essential to create a robust industry capable of doling out fair wages.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all need each other,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At about $1,700 a month, Ricardo Ceja\u2019s truck driver paystub looks decent. But then come the deductions — for insurance, registration, inspection, parking, repairs, fuel and the truck lease — until Ceja comes up $900 dollars short. \u201cThis is modern age slavery,\u201d Ceja says. \u201cAnd they\u2019ve been getting away with it.\u201d He\u2019s been on strike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":618,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[67,63,65,66,64],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/618"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/j469.ascjclass.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}