The dream of "being your own boss" has inspired generations of American workers. But as American business has downsized its workforce, contracting out more and more work to the lowest bidder, thousands of independent contractors are saying "Enough! We want back into the workforce."

LOS ANGELES -- There are some jobs that make people want unions. Driving a truck in the L.A. harbor is one of them.

The federal government says harbor truckers and millions of workers like them cannot join a union. They're not workers at all, the government says, they're independent contractors.

But as American business has downsized its workforce, contracting out more and more work to the lowest bidder, thousands of independent contractors are saying "Enough!" In an era when people supposedly want to get out of the working class, they want to stay in it.

Some 6,000 truck drivers who ply the Los Angeles harbor -- almost all immigrants from Mexico and Central America -- were declared owner-operators when the federal government deregulated the trucking industry in the late 1970s. Now they are threatening to shut the harbor down unless the shipping and trucking companies they work for start treating them as employees again.

Almost all 6,000 have signed union cards with the Communications Workers of America. They hope to convince employers to recognize a dispatch and hiring hall run by the drivers themselves which would regulate the work and end long waiting lines.

Three times before, in 1984, 1988 and 1993, harbor truckers have closed down the harbor seeking the right to unionize. Today their harbor battles are part of a larger immigrant labor upsurge rejuvenating southern California's union movement, which has seen drywallers and framers, janitors, farmworkers, hotel workers and factory workers all strike and win union contracts in the last few years.

Raul Miramontes, a trucker who came to California from Mexico, ticks off the benefits he and thousands of others forfeited when deregulation turned them from regular employees into a contingency workforce. Once he received an hourly wage; now he is paid by the load; where companies once paid the cost of gasoline, insurance, truck repairs, workers comp and unemployment insurance, today Miramontes bears these costs himself.

While the profits of trucking and shipping companies rose, truckers like Miramontes saw their income drop from a one-time high of $50,000 to anywhere between $15-20,000.

The biggest problem, Miramontes explains, is the downtime for which truckers get no pay. "In order to get a load, you have to get up at four a.m. ... go down to the harbor and get into the lines. Then you wait."

At the truck terminals, hundreds of cabs and empty trailers stand with their big diesels running. The air turns thick and acrid from the blue smoke. In the distance, huge ships are pulled up next to the docks, containers stacked so high on their decks they seem like tall buildings. Enormous container cranes stack and unstack them, moving them like toys from dock to ship and back.

"Finally, you get to the head of the line, and you get a container," Miramontes goes on. "Then you're on the freeway, making time as fast as you can, to deliver it to the customer. When you get there, you usually have to wait to unload as well, before you go back down to the harbor for another pickup. And during all those hours of waiting, you're paid nothing."

Waiting isn't the truckers' only complaint. The containers, which are the size of a semi-trailer, are often not inspected properly. When they're poorly packed and the cargo inside shifts suddenly, the whole rig turns over -- container, tractor, trailer and driver as well. On a freeway, that can be deadly, not only for the trucker but for other cars as well.

Kaan Ural, a Turkish immigrant, calls the working conditions terrible. "We often wait 10 and 12 hours a day and work 24 hours without stopping. I have a wife and two kids. If I go to work tomorrow and break my leg on the job, no one will take care of them."

Ural, like Miramontes and other harbor truckers, figures he'd have a better chance at improving these conditions as a union member -- something the NLRB has blocked for almost two decades. The government claims the truckers are owner-operators who sell their labor to employers but aren't employed directly by them. Truckers retort that the distinction is a legal fiction, designed to strip truckers of their labor rights and deny them benefits other workers enjoy.

"We all came here with the intention of sharing the American dream," Ural says. "Now that I'm here, I see the real America. Employers had a purpose in bringing us here -- they want our labor because it's cheaper. That's why we're trying to organize. The companies should take us very seriously."