Teamsters: will vigorously oppose border truck plan
A Teamsters news release said there is “vast public support to keep the border closed,” noting that Congress had voted two years ago last month to yank funding for the previous cross-border trucking program.
The Trucker News Services
4/14/2011
WASHINGTON — Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said recently that union members will “vigorously oppose a dangerous plan to open the border to Mexico, a country ravaged by a drug war.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) recently outlined its proposal to open the border to Mexican trucks and just started its 30-day comment period.
Hoffa said the Transportation Department’s move “shows reckless disregard for American jobs and for public safety as well as for the stewardship of U.S. tax dollars.
“Do Transportation Department officials read the news?” Hoffa said. “In the past week, eight people were killed in Ciudad Juarez within a half hour. A mass grave was discovered 80 miles from Brownsville, Texas, with 59 bodies in it. A federal prosecutor was kidnapped and murdered in Durango after she’d been on the job for a week. Five men were killed in Taxco during another kidnapping attempt.”
“What is it about Mexico’s drug violence that DOT doesn’t understand?” he said.
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He also questioned whether DOT officials know that the official U.S. unemployment rate is 8.8 percent, adding that the proposal “threatens the jobs of thousands of American truck drivers and warehouse workers along the border.
“Why should Americans pay for Mexican trucking companies to take their jobs? DOT is failing to protect taxpayers by proposing to spend scarce Highway Trust funds to put electronic on-board recorders (EOBRs) on Mexican trucks. As if that isn’t bad enough, we learn … that United States’ tax dollars are being spent to put catalytic converters on Mexican trucks.
“A government’s first duty is to protect its citizens. Unfortunately, DOT is failing miserably in that responsibility.”
A Teamsters news release said there is “vast public support to keep the border closed,” noting that Congress had voted two years ago last month to yank funding for the previous cross-border trucking program.
Dorothy Cox of The Trucker staff may be contacted to comment at dlcox@thetrucker.com.
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