Posted on 04/25/2006 2:36:39 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The organization for truckers serving California harbors supports a Bush administration plan to check the backgrounds of port workers as long as it doesn't interfere with their livelihood, an official said Tuesday. However, a longshore union official called the plan "harassment."
The government envisions looking into the backgrounds of hundreds of thousands of workers in the most sensitive areas of the nation's ports, and also issuing tamper-proof identification cards.
Stephanie Williams, vice president of the California Trucking Association, said she supported background checks if they are quick and don't interfere with the work of the nearly 12,000 truckers at the state's harbors.
"If it take four months to get back the information and the driver can't drive in the meantime, then we have a problem," Williams said.
Steve Stallone, spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said the move "looks a lot like harassment of the workers." The government should intensify its scrutiny of shipping containers, he said.
"It seems to us that the biggest security threat is coming from the outside, and not from the workers who live and work in those communities," said Stallone, whose union represents about 14,000 West Coast longshoremen and clerks.
California is home to the nation's largest harbor complex, the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle more than 43 percent of America's goods.
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Every one of them is a legal resident or I sure hope so. Many of those jobs pay very well, btw.
But we all know, in those cases where an unsavory is tagged, they will have just been doing the jobs Americans will not do.
A bunch of real Americans are going to fill some of those "undesirable" $40 per hour jobs.
It's not exactly picking lettuce in Yuma. That there's a $50/hour job! :-)
Thousands, no millions stand to lose jobs, BIG TIME!
One would think that these background checks would have started at least 3 years ago.
Time to start a little document printing business....
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