On January 19, the Teamsters filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a union election to be held by some two hundred fifty port truckers who drive for XPO Logistics, a global logistics powerhouse with more than a hundred thousand employees around the world.

In filing for an election, XPO port truckers are contesting their status as independent contractors. The move is part of a broader campaign against misclassification in the trucking industry, which has shifted toward nonunion and independent contractor models in the decades of deregulation that followed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. The Teamsters have been waging the fight against XPO for years, and represent the company’s East Coast freight drivers, who are classified as employees. By contrast, independent contractors cannot unionize in the United States, and are excluded from job protections such as minimum-wage and antidiscrimination laws.

XPO port truckers haul goods at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the point of entry for some 40 percent of shipping containers imported to the United States. A key link in the supply chain, these drivers have seen conditions worsen with supply chain snarls.