by Andrew Grossman
Note: This article has been edited since publication to more accurately reflect the class nature of the protest.
On July 1, a convoy of about a dozen truckers from both the US and Mexico drove from Odessa, TX through to Kermit and Monahans, TX. The protest, which was joined by environmental activists, blocked the entrances to sand mines and picketed Halliburton offices in Odessa to demand wage increases, payment for time stuck in their rigs, and reasonable bathroom breaks and restrooms. The latter demand is not mandated by federal labor law for truckers.
The protest was jointly organized by the US organization Truckers Movement for Justice (TJM) and the Mexican organizations United Mexican Carriers and the Binational Carriers Union.
The founder of TJM told monopoly media outlet FreightWaves, “We go back to the simple fact that trucking companies are using our brothers and sisters in Mexico against our brothers and sisters in the United States”, and went on to call for working class solidarity across the border.
In fact, it is not the Mexicans “being used” against American truckers, but the imperialist oppression of the Mexican workers feeding back to harm truckers on both sides of the border.
The Mexican drivers are primarily wage workers on B1 work visas in the US, while the Americans are owner-operators who are nevertheless joining with the waged workers to fight for better conditions across the two classes of drivers.
The drivers primarily work for contractors hired by the oil companies in the Texan and New Mexican Permian Basin area. The lack of regulations and the super-exploitation of the Mexican waged drivers also harms the contracts of the owner-operators by driving down their rates and working conditions, forming the basis for the cross-class alliance between the two types of drivers against their commonly enemy in the contractor and oil companies. The companies offload costs onto the owner-operators: the road conditions beat up their trucks, the bathrooms are baking hot port-o-johns, and the company makes the owner-operators responsible for repairs, fuel, and unpaid wait times for loading and unloading the fracking sand they deliver.
The truckers held a similar protest in 2023, which the companies met with a round of mass layoffs in response. While the companies said this was due to lower demand for labor, the American Trucking Association cited a freight driver shortage to Congress the same year. S&P Global Ratings says manufacturers have over-produced tractor-trailers and have downgraded their ratings for truck manufacturers. This is amid the logistics crisis that is part of the general, developing crisis of imperialism. Lower wages, more grueling hours and working conditions, and deregulation are all features of this crisis of overproduction. To supply more and cheaper labor, the Biden administration has allowed 18-year-old truckers to drive across state lines, while his border policy serves to increase the supply of child migrant labor.
For their part, the Mexican truckers say they face assault and theft from both government and non-government gangs, and these threats combined with low wages drives the truckers to become B1 workers in the US. However, the Mexican drivers in the US make significantly less than their American counterparts: according to the protesting truckers, they are promised 30 cents a mile by the American companies and then paid 19 cents a mile in a bait-and-switch.
The working-class participation in this protest is starkly contrasted with the 2022 Canadian trucker convoy protests against Covid vaccine mandates, comprised mainly of owner-operators who had the support of Trump and all manner of right-wing populists. That protest was eventually quelled by the Canadian government after they threatened to confiscate the owner-operators’ rigs, showing the limitations of small-proprietor protests.
