Despite Focus on Jobs, Mayor Will Not Yield at Port of LA

Facing a local unemployment rate of nearly 14 percent, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has stressed that he's focused on one goal often overlooked in his previous term: creating jobs. To do so, the Mayor has turned to some of the city's most influential business leaders for help. A formal announcement on the role of the team and possible hire of a deputy mayor to serve as jobs czar will come in January.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the business leaders recently picked by Villaraigosa to lead the jobs initiative say the mayor's administration did not pay enough attention to the economy during his first term. Los Angeles controls the Port of Los Angeles, one of Southern California's biggest economic drivers. Instead of using the port as a growth engine, former Mayor Richard Riordan said, initiatives such as Villaraigosa's clean-air program at the Port of Los Angeles put truck drivers out of work.

The City of Los Angeles, International Brotherhood of the Teamsters and Natural Resources Defense Council, have fought tooth and nail for regulations requiring all drayage drivers at the port to work as employees of trucking firms. Forcing owner-operators to give up their businesses and work for large companies is not needed or even related to air quality issues and is not needed to allow port expansion, but it does make it easier to unionize the drivers.

The employee mandate threatens the efficiency of the port and will drive cargo from Los Angeles to other ports, undermining the jobs of all port workers. Everyone loses when Los Angeles loses cargo share.

"They moved too quickly," said Riordan, who Villaraigosa selected to head a team of volunteer economic advisors to spur job growth. "You're getting environmentalists and unions going in for their piece of the pie without looking at the fact that people are starving in the meantime. If you're destroying the lives of poor people, you have to step back."

Despite the dire employment situation and the commitment to job creation, Villaraigosa remains unwilling to drop the lawsuit over the labor aspects of the Port's clean-air program. According to CityWatch, Los Angeles has already spent $5 million with an additional $2-3 million budgeted for litigation and lobbying to defend the port's clean truck concession requirements, which would force thousands of independent owner-operators out of their jobs.