“Truckers Movement for Justice is a vision – is a dream. It’s a dream that drivers who run these roads, who bring nearly every type of goods to your doorstep, will once again rise up, organize, and have a quality of life,” said Billy J. Randel, co-founder and co-director of Truckers Movement for Justice (TMJ).
“All we want is a decent living. We want to be able to support our families. We want to be able to send our children off to school. We want to have a decent life. We’re not looking to be billionaires,” added Ray Randall (known as Hollywood), Billy J’s co-conspirator and long-time friend.
It all started in a New Jersey parking lot almost twenty years ago when Billy and Hollywood, who’d both been driving trucks their entire working lives, decided to start organizing truck drivers across the country to demand better working conditions and pay. Their movement has since crossed borders and they’re now building an international alliance between U.S. and Mexico-based truck drivers in partnership with United Mexican Carriers (TAMEXUN) and the Mexican Truckers Union (SITRABICS).
Billy and Hollywood in the early days (circa 2008) when they started organizing truck drivers in North Carolina.
For TMJ, it’s not just an economic fight. It’s also an environmental one. Their interorganizational movement has allies across sectors fighting against the exploitation of both workers and natural resources.
Truckers, particularly drivers who work in the oil and gas industry, are suffering from widespread wage theft and dangerous exposure to hazardous materials, while oil companies indiscriminately destroy natural resources and harm the communities that live around them. Workers are routinely not compensated for their full work day and they face the threat of retaliation and blacklisting when they stand up to demand just compensation or their rights as workers. The exploitation is so bad across the trucking industry that workers today earn 50% of what they earned 45 years ago. Meanwhile, the oil and gas companies like Chevron, Exxon, and Haliburton, make billions of dollars on the backs of truckers. Drivers aren’t compensated for the hours spent driving empty tanks nor are they compensated for waiting time loading and unloading, which can be as long as 36 hours.
Truck drivers action at the Department of Transportation urging them to enforce labor rights.
“Our dream is to build a sustainable community-based, worker-run economy – compatible with corporations and industry – as long as they adhere to our standards and are held accountable to workers and the communities we live in,” Billy said.
They are hard at work building this dream. From flyering at truck stops and rest areas, to organizing actions and strikes at work sites, speaking at press conferences and relentlessly attending stakeholder meetings, TMJ is building an international and interorganizational movement to demand justice for truckers. TMJ’s membership base is located all across the United States, though their most recent organizing efforts are in the Permian Basin and Appalachia, where fracking is not only destroying ecosystems and natural landscapes but also where workers are forced to transport hazardous materials without any protections or increased pay. TMJ is pushing the Departments of Transportation and Labor to enforce their own rules and regulations. Currently, drivers aren’t provided with proper training or license endorsements that come with higher compensation and hazardous cargo is not properly labeled as such nor are the designated transit routes followed. TMJ is leading the fight to change this.
Sign this petition to urge the Department of Transportation to enforce existing hazardous material rules when it comes to hauling oilfield waste.
“Let us be the power – all truckers united,” Hollywood said.
TMJ has operated as a fully volunteer-based organization and just this year joined SVA’s movement ecosystem as a sponsored project. We are thrilled to support their movement.
Follow them on Instagram @truckers_movement_for_justice.
