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On the WaterfrontA radical labor-green idea at the ports of Southern California.

By Emily BazelonPosted Friday, Oct. 5, 2007, at 5:25 PM ET

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So, is forcing the companies to hire their truck drivers as employees the best way to weave the cleanup into the cost of doing business? Husing is agnostic. But he agrees that the drivers' wages need to rise. At the moment, because of deregulation at the ports in the 1970s, they're at the bottom of their own industry, where wages average $16 to $20 an hour. And Husing recognizes that the trucks are the leverage the port authorities have over the larger players. "The only control you have is over the weakest link, and you're pressuring them to force a price increase on the strongest link: the ocean shipping lines and the cargo owners," he says.

Ultimately, the price of freight will go up because of the cleanup: Husing estimates hefty rate increases and says that in the first year, upgrading the ports' 16,000 trucks will cost $1.1 billion. But spread out over all the goods being shipped, the markup for consumers could be tiny, the labor groups argue—a few cents on a pair of sneakers or piece of clothing. The cleanup also is projected to produce longer-term economic benefit: reduced respiratory ailments and lost days of work and school, for a regional boost of as much as $1 billion a year over the first five years, according to Husing. A study commissioned by the local green-labor coalition came up with similar numbers. The government would also save on services. Only 10 percent of the 16,800 truck drivers currently have health insurance; turning them into employees would presumably change that and shift their medical costs to the private sector.

Still, over and above the cost-benefit analysis, and given the cleanup plan's remarkable sweep, the proposal needs serious political will behind it. The labor-green folks have been talking for months to the port commissioners and the offices of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles and Mayor Bob Foster in Long Beach. Opponents are pushing back. Politically, they're in a somewhat tricky position: Since it's hard to be in favor of dirty air, they're arguing that they'll back a cleanup, but just not this cleanup.

They also have a legal card to play: the threat to sue the ports for requiring drivers to have employee status, on the grounds that the mandate would be an anti-competitive ban that would violate federal shipping law. Even if that's a losing legal argument, as the labor groups believe, tie-ups in court could slow down the cleanup plan for years and make it cost more.

And then there's the question of transition: How do the ports go about retrofitting and replacing thousands of trucks in a short time span? How do they keep everything running smoothly enough that the shippers and the cargo buyers don't take their business elsewhere? There's lots to sort through here. But it's not often that a local branch of government gets to try out a big, bold policy experiment that shifts wealth from powerful multinational corporations to several thousand immigrant truck drivers. And makes it easier for Californians to breathe deeply, too.