Blue and Green: The Drive for Justice at America's Port

by Scott L. Cummings

Overview

How an alliance of the labor and environmental movements used law as a tool to clean up the trucking industry at the nation's largest port.

In Blue and Green, Scott Cummings examines a campaign by the labor and environmental movements to transform trucking at America's largest port in Los Angeles. Tracing the history of struggle in an industry at the epicenter of the global supply chain, Cummings shows how an unprecedented “blue-green” alliance mobilized to improve working conditions for low-income drivers and air quality in nearby communities. The campaign for “clean trucks,” Cummings argues, teaches much about how social movements can use law to challenge inequality in a global era.

Cummings shows how federal deregulation created interrelated economic and environmental problems at the port and how the campaign fought back by mobilizing law at the local level. He documents three critical stages: initial success in passing landmark legislation requiring port trucking companies to convert trucks from dirty to clean and drivers from contractors to employees with full labor rights; campaign decline after industry litigation blocked employee conversion; and campaign resurgence through an innovative legal approach to driver misclassification that realized a central labor movement goal—unionizing port truckers.

Appraising the campaign, Cummings analyzes the tradeoffs of using alternative legal frameworks to promote labor organizing, and explores lessons for building movements to regulate low-wage work in the “gig” economy. He shows how law can bind coalitions together and split them apart, and concludes that the fight for legal reform never ends, but rather takes different turns on the long road to justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262036986
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Series:	Urban and Industrial Environments
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.31(h) x 1.26(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Scott L. Cummings is Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

List of Acronyms xiii

1 The Movement for Economic and Environmental Justice at America's Port 1

2 Law in the Development of the Port 17

3 The Port as a Unit of Legal Analysis 51

4 Resisting the Port: Activism in Separate Spheres 59

5 Reforming the Port: The Campaign for Clean Trucks 103

6 Reshaping the Industry: The Challenge to Misclassification 185

7 Assessing the Movement: Impact and Implications 293

Notes 355

Index 499

Series List 525

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A comprehensive study of the origins and development of the campaign to improve labor and environmental conditions at the hub of the modern consumer economy. Illuminating complex intersections of local and national law, Cummings's book is essential reading for scholars of urban studies, local government, labor, and social movements.

—Catherine Fisk, Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law

Scott Cummings has constructed a compelling analytical narrative about how immigrant truck drivers and environmental activists came together to advance progressive change in Los Angeles area ports. The case study provides powerful, enduring lessons about how law at once shapes, constrains, and facilitates political mobilization in local group-based struggles. Very highly recommended!

—Michael McCann, Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship, University of Washington

An insightful and inspiring account of an “against-all-odds” campaign to clean up the nation's largest port, which expanded into a struggle for social and economic justice. Cummings shows how progressive reform can be built locally; how it depends on sometimes surprising coalitions; and how law serves as both an ally and an obstacle to social change. All timely lessons.

—Jody Freeman, Founder of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School; coauthor of Global Climate Change and U.S. Law

Endorsement

An insightful and inspiring account of an “against-all-odds” campaign to clean up the nation's largest port, which expanded into a struggle for social and economic justice. Cummings shows how progressive reform can be built locally; how it depends on sometimes surprising coalitions; and how law serves as both an ally and an obstacle to social change. All timely lessons.

—Jody Freeman, Founder of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School; coauthor of Global Climate Change and U.S. Law