Teamsters continue to battle Mexican trucks

The plan to let Mexican trucks operate throughout the United States has prompted a war of words and legal papers between the Bush administration and Jim Hoffa, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Hoffa and his allies at the Sierra Club and Public Citizen have sued in federal court to stop the government from issuing permits to Mexican freight haulers. Their lawyers argued in court that Mexican trucks pose a danger on the roads and threaten increased human and drug smuggling.

"Dangerous trucks should not be driving all the way from Mexico to Maine and Minnesota," said Hoffa in a prepared statement. "What is it about safety and national security that George Bush doesn't understand?"
advertisement


The government argued that stopping the trucks would unsettle a key trading partner in Mexico and delay U.S.trucks from operating south of the border. Officials insist that a lengthy pre-inspection of Mexican firms has resulted in strict safety standards and compliance with congressional mandates.

"We chose to do this incrementally and cautiously," said John Hill, who runs the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates truck safety and is responsible for the cross-border trucking plan. "These carriers are going to be safe."

He has 254 inspectors along the border. Only 16 of the 188 firms inspected have failed. Just over 100 withdrew, signaling the inspections are rigorous, Hill said.The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Friday denied an emergency injunction to halt the program. The union will continue its lawsuit.

Nothing can happen until the inspector general of the Department of Transportation blesses the one-year experiment and until the Mexican government issues permits to U.S. trucking companies.

That all could happen as early as Thursday.

The heated rhetoric has melted into obscurity the fact that very few firms on either side of the border are interested. To date, 31 Mexican firms - with a maximum of 151 trucks - are poised for U.S. permits, and two-thirds of the firms are in Baja California. Two Mexican border states have no firms cleared to operate in the U.S. interior, including Sonora, across the border from Arizona.

In the United States, only 14 firms are awaiting permits from the Mexican government, Hill said.

Teamsters accuse the government of cherry-picking Mexican firms to skew the results of the imminent experiment.

"You can't take the 151 safest trucks in Mexico and let them drive all over the United States for a year and then say your entire program is safe," Teamsters spokeswoman Leslie Miller said.

Hill says follow-up reviews by the inspector general, plus one independent technical panel that includes former Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe, will assure the results' validity.

Opening the border to trucks was a key part of the North American Free Trade Agreement inked in 1994. The trucks were supposed to be delivering international cargo seven years ago. Under the trade pact, certified Mexican trucks can carry loads anywhere in the United States but can pick up loads only if they are bound for Mexico. The converse applies to U.S. trucks.

That was the arrangement before 1982. Since then, Mexican trucks have operated within a 25-mile commercial zone along the border. There, they transfer loads to U.S. trucks. Last year, 4.5 million trucks crossed north over the border, mostly through Texas.