Teamsters General President Calls Program a ‘Sucker Punch to American
Workers’
HOUSTON, Sept. 8 LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire — Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said today that the Bush administration shows how little it cares about homeland security by opening our southern border to uninspected Mexican trucks.
“The Bush administration has sucker punched American workers by opening
our highways to dangerous trucks,” Hoffa told about 1,000 Teamster women
and guests attending the union’s annual Teamster Women’s Conference at the Hilton- Americas Houston Hotel.
“We don’t know who these drivers are and we don’t know what they’re
bringing in,” Hoffa said. “The weapons of mass destruction George Bush is
looking for could be in the backs of these trucks.”
The Bush administration’s pilot program to allow unsafe Mexican trucks to share the highways with American drivers is dangerous, illegal and a
threat to national security. The U.S. Transportation Department’s inspector general reported Friday that the Bush administration does not require its
inspectors to verify licenses of drivers who are not citizens of the United States or Mexico.
The Teamsters have a case pending before the 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco and are pressuring Congress to block the program.
Hoffa said the public is on the Teamsters’ side. “Democrats,
Republicans, independents — everyone wants to keep our highways safe,”
Hoffa said.
“The Teamsters are going to stop this madness,” Hoffa said. “We’re
going to stop George Bush.”
Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking women and men throughout North America.
Legal documents filed in the case and other documents related to this
issue can be found at http://www.teamster.org.
