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World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
Ports accuse
dockworkers of slowdown;
Union blames productivity drop off on safety concerns
George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 12, 2002
Frayed labor relations worsened on West Coast ports Friday when an
employer's group said productivity was 20 to 25 percent below normal and
the union shut down a congested terminal at the Port of Los Angeles for 30
minutes because of unsafe traffic conditions.
The employers said there is a falloff in productivity because the union,
the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, is providing too few
workers and those who have been provided are arriving late.
The tension on the waterfront rose two days after dockworkers returned to
work under a Taft-Hartley Act court order obtained by President Bush in
U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Under the act, a union can be fined if workers are not performing, in this
case, at a "normal and reasonable rate of speed," and so it is
possible the ILWU and the employers, represented by the Pacific Maritime
Association, will be back in federal court in San Francisco next week to
discuss productivity.
The PMA would only say it is "monitoring" the situation.
The union says it is working safely, stressing that five of their members
were killed at ports in the past seven months as cargo loads spiked and
the congested conditions pose safety hazards.
John Pachtner, a spokesman for the PMA, representing shipping lines and
terminal operators, said, "We are very concerned because we are not
moving toward a normal level of production."
L.A. PORT SHUT DOWN
At the Port of Los Angeles Friday, two incidents at the Maersk
Terminal around 10 a.m. led to a 30-minute shutdown of the facility and
underscore the union's case for working safely: A trucker struck a cart at
the terminal, causing minor property damage, and nearby a union official
was nearly struck by another truck, according to the union.
A union official has the authority to shut down operations if there is a
health and safety risk, and he did so. Work resumed after a guard was
posted to direct traffic in the congested area, a union source said.
It was also learned Friday that on Wednesday a mechanic at the Port of
Long Beach was shocked with 480 volts when unplugging a refrigerated
container. The man, whose name was not released, remains hospitalized.
Dockworkers backed by the AFL-CIO moved Friday to make safety topic A in
their contract struggle with the PMA, while the employers said that post-
lockout longshore worker productivity has fallen sharply.
Productivity and safety are central in the tussle between the PMA and ILWU,
as it was a perceived worker slowdown, following fruitless contract
negotiations, that led the PMA to lock out the workers and shut down the
29 West Coast ports until they were reopened by court order Oct. 8. It
ended when President Bush obtained an under in federal court under the
Taft-Hartley Act, on grounds the lockout was endangering the nation.
The ILWU members this week began to move to market an unprecedented amount
of cargo that accumulated at the 29 ports along the coast while they were
locked out of work.
WORKERS WANT SAFETY INSPECTORS
Before and after the lockout, the workers denied they were engaged in
a slowdown, that they were only "working safely" or according to
safety guidelines.
The ILWU began a campaign Friday asking the public to pressure the PMA to
hire and train more personnel to move the cargo, and AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney called on Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and the governors of
California, Oregon and Washington to put health and safety inspectors in
the ports.
Sweeney's letter to Chao clearly showed organized labor's concerns that
the workers will be perceived as conducting a slowdown when, he said, they
are being guided by legitimate concerns over safety.
The court order under Taft-Hartley requires the workers to perform at a
"normal and reasonable rate of speed," and therein is what
Sweeney called "fertile ground for controversies." A federal
judge could fine the ILWU under Taft-Hartley if there's a finding workers
are not performing.
"By dispatching government inspectors to the docks, you can help take
this issue out of play, so that the parties can concentrate on the hard
work of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement," Sweeney wrote
to Chao.
DANGEROUS WORK
Meanwhile, the deaths of five longshore workers at California ports
this year does suggest statistically that working on the docks is among
America's most dangerous jobs. Moreover, they have become pressure points
in the labor dispute along the West Coast waterfronts.
Five deaths is a significant increase, considering that in 2000 there were
no deaths of union dockworkers at ports in Washington, Oregon and
California, and one death in Oregon in 2001.
Two other nonunion workers were killed in port accidents this year, and
since Jan. 1, there have been 1,668 injuries reported at the facilities,
696 of them resulting in loss of four or more days' work, the union says.
Statistically, five deaths in a group of 10,500 people can be calculated
as 47.6 deaths per 100,000 people employed, which would place longshore
workers about in the middle of the list of occupations with the highest
fatality rates for 2001, as compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor,
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The list shows "fishers" with the most deaths at 151.2 deaths
per 100,000. Second is timber cutters with 127.8, followed by mining
machine operators, 109. 7; airline pilots, 64; structural metal workers,
57.7; garbage collectors, 55. 4; roofers, 36.3; construction laborers,
33.5; farm workers, 27.9, and electrical power installers, 26.1.
Dean Fryer, a spokesman for Cal-OSHA, said the seven port deaths are
certainly a spike, but he noted that they occurred at various locations
with different employers, at different times of the year and involved
different jobs, "so it is impossible to draw a common thread and say
there is a problem with a specific approach to a hazardous
situation."
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Death on the docks
Five longshore workers have died in workplace accidents at California
ports this year:
-- John Prohoroff, on March 14 at the Port of Long Beach, when he was
struck by a spreader bar that fell from a crane.
-- Mario Gonzalez, on March 15 at the Port of Los Angeles, when he was
struck by a hydraulic-activated door on an auto shredder.
-- Richard Peters, on June 1 at the Port of Eureka, when a ship-board
gantry crane swung and crushed him against the ship.
-- Richie Lopez Jr., on June 23 at Port Hueneme (Ventura County), when he
was run over by a forklift.
-- Rudy Acosta, on Sept. 3 at the Port of Long Beach, when he was run over
and killed by a top handler, a cargo-moving device.
E-mail George Raine at graine@sfchronicle.com