After a fallow two or so weeks, all five of our rosebushes have buds or blossoms or both. At least three of our tomato plants sport nascent green spheres. A common-but-unknown-to-me plant under our smoke tree snaked a winding 2-foot-long stem out to catch some rays for its flower. And why not? It’s 66 degrees out, clear and bright with a gentle breeze.

Nonetheless, the world feels mean.

People taunting and torturing the vulnerable isn’t new. Police and vigilantes murdering black people with impunity isn’t new. Congressional representatives trying to dilute or eliminate insurance for working people and giving the proceeds to billionaires isn’t new.  Even colleges replacing work-study programs and graduate student stipends with unpaid internships isn’t new.

Today’s new meanness emanates from port trucking companies.

It had already occurred to me that ordering small things a few at a time and having them shipped across the country or the world to my house in cardboard boxes with plastic shipping pillows potentially has a negative impact on air quality, solid waste disposal, nonproliferation of plastics, the well-being of local or regional businesses and job-seekers, traffic flow, pavement longevity, the status of nonmaterial values, and national self-restraint, to name a few. Which is not to say I never do it.

I also knew that employees of the obvious large shippers, those who deliver the items into my hands, whom I recognize and greet when they arrive, are under constant scrutiny and pressure. At least they are well-compensated, as figured on a yearly, though perhaps not an hourly, basis, unlike port truckers in California.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach combined receive about 45% of US shipping container traffic. These huge ports are the biggest polluter in the LA area, so they have implemented a Green Port program imposing strict pollution controls on all entering vehicles, including container ships. Port truckers drive the containers from the ports to their first stop, often a rail yard or storage depot.

Port truckers used to be employees of port trucking companies, but to avoid the costs of running cleaner trucks, almost all those companies now exclusively employ contractors who sign a lease-to-own contract on their rigs. These contracts are abrogated for any missed payments, including for illness or a large repair bill, that is, for conditions that occur frequently. Companies repossess the truck, in which the owner-driver may have invested tens of thousands of dollars, for free, and then lease it to another driver. The drivers, in constant fear of imminent ruin, are easily victimized by other abuses, such as forcing them to violate daily time and distance limit laws.

Holy unintended consequences! This is a big problem for California, but workplace protections don’t apply to contractors, so it’s a problem looking for a solution.

Greed is clearly making a lot of people act mean, and that disturbs me.

I also feel some culpability. The woes of the world are wide, but the ones happening close to home and caused by some of our perhaps less savory habits combined with our best intentions are the ones that bother me most.

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If you like sources: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/20/rigged-system-rips-off-port-truckers-editorials-debates/103015290/