Need Language Help to Outreach to Vietnamese Truck Drivers

Over the past year, the campaign for Clean and Safe Ports have reached out to thousands of port drivers and built a committee of worker leaders to help lead a campaign for fair wages and benefits all over the country. At the Port of Oakland campaign, organizers are looking for Vietnamese-speaking volunteers to accompany them on visits to more than 100 Vietnamese workers' homes to talk to them about their experiences and encourage them to participate in the campaign.

• Visits would take place between 5 and 8 pm on weekdays and between 10 am and 7 pm on weekends in Oakland, between March 5th and March 20th.
  
  
• If you have organizing experience, here's a chance to use your language skills. If you don't have organizing experience, this is a great introduction and training will be provided.
  
  
• Organizers will work around your schedule but it is best to sign up for 2-3 hour shift.

Background on the Campaign: Teamsters and the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports are organizing thousands of immigrant truck drivers at the Port of Oakland to demand fair wages and benefits – and to cut back the pollution that is poisoning both drivers and West Oakland residents. Campaign organizers need your help to involve Vietnamese drivers in the campaign!

The campaign: about 2,500 truck drivers – immigrants from all over the world – work at the Port for over 100 small trucking companies. Because drivers are misclassified as "independent owner-operators" instead of employees, trucking companies require them to work long hours for low pay and fail to provide them with Social Security, workers' comp, or other basic benefits because of their status as independent contractors, it is illegal for these truck drivers to form a union to advocate for a better life. And because drivers are responsible for maintaining the trucks, they can't afford to make environmental improvements – so trucks keep spewing dirty diesel fumes that cause asthma among drivers and local community residents.

The campaign seeks to organize the truckers and local communities to demand that trucking companies hire the workers as direct employees, provide them with fair wages and benefits, and provide clean trucks that do not harm worker and community health.

For more information, contact Sarah Norr at the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy at 510-435-9475 or sarah@workingeastbay.org.