The city of Los Angeles filed three lawsuits against some of the busiest port trucking companies in the country Monday, demanding they stop systematically exploiting their workers in the wake of reports by the USA TODAY Network.
“This abuse, this disgraceful exploitation has to stop,” City Attorney Mike Feuer said at a news conference Monday, citing the Network’s “scathing” coverage of the industry.
Feuer alleged CMI Transportation, K&R Transportation and California Cartage Transportation Express represent industry leaders that knowingly violate state labor laws with “devastating practices” meant to increase executives’ bottom lines while driving their workers into debt.
To avoid the cost, many companies pushed their independent drivers into lease-to-own contracts that they didn’t understand and could not afford.
When drivers got sick or fell behind on payments, trucking companies fired them, seizing their trucks and tens of thousands of dollars they had paid toward buying them.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is one of several high-profile lawmakers, including Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, of California, and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, who have launched public pressure campaigns to reform the industry.
