Friction Between Workers at Port Rising Over Jobs

By DAVID GREENBERG

Staff Reporter

Casual longshoremen hired earlier this summer on a temporary basis are fuming over not getting preferential treatment in applying for 3,000 permanent positions.

They also claim that in the process of selecting the new casual positions the first step toward becoming members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union family and friends of current union members are being given special consideration.

That, the temporary workers say, drastically reduced their chances of being selected for permanent status among the more than 400,000 applications.

“I’m being dumped by 3,000 new hires,” said Joe Eckert, one of the 1,200 temporary casual workers who get job assignments on an as-needed basis. “I don’t think I got a fair shot.”

More than 200 temporary workers have hired a lawyer, who sent an Aug. 23 letter to the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, the bargaining arm of the steamship lines, threatening legal action if the temporary casuals are not given permanent status. (The ILWU and the PMA comprise the joint labor relations committee that hires longshoremen.) The suit was filed last week.

“(ILWU) Local 13 is scabbing out on us,” said Ray Munoz, who said he has logged about 160 hours since quitting his job as a legal aide to become a temporary casual in July. “They are letting these people take our jobs. They preach about solidarity and union and then they do this to us.”

The PMA strongly denied it promised or even implied any guarantees of long-term work for the temporaries. Temporary casuals are given work cards good for 21-day increments. Permanent casuals don’t have to reapply for extensions and can work every day, but only after registered ILWU members that want to work that day have gotten a job.

The association said the selection process gave preference but no guarantees to 8,500 people who received special application cards from both union members and the PMA. Those 8,500 were combined with another 8,500 applications that were drawn from the batch of 400,000, from which a total of 3,000 job winners were chosen.

It’s not known whether any of the 1,200 temporary workers received special applications cards.

Skirting the law

Only experienced former casual workers who had lost their cards by not working at least one day over a six-month period were given the chance to return as a permanent casual without having to go through the lottery system, the agency said. (Those workers were not part of the 3,000 people to be hired.)

“These are people who had worked on the docks and had strong industry knowledge,” said Steve Sugerman, a PMA consultant. “The (temporaries) came from different crafts to help out with the immediate crunch. Those people were part of the large pool if they wanted to apply.”

The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 states that a union shop must be open to all individuals, not simply union members and their families and friends. But labor experts said some unions including longshoremen, construction workers and Hollywood production employees skirt the law by adopting policies that favor members, such as giving promotions and registered status based on seniority.

“In theory, anybody is supposed to be treated equally without regard to union status,” said Daniel Mitchell, a UCLA professor of management and public policy. “(But favoritism) has been the practice on the docks for decades, going back before Taft-Hartley. They have various rationales as to why what they have is not a closed shop.”

Dockworkers said the conflict was played out at the Wilmington hiring hall Aug. 23 when the permanent and temporary casuals were waiting for the second-shift job assignments to be issued. Permanent casuals got into heated arguments with temporaries and non-longshoremen union leaders and labor activists who came to support the temporaries’ cause.

A brawl nearly broke out, dockworkers said, when the temporaries complained about receiving termination letters, only to be told by permanent casuals that they did not have any guarantees to join the ranks and that when their temporary casual cards expired, they should leave.

“I’d say I was in shock,” Christian Martinez said of the termination letter. “They said we had equal opportunity here and that we could be hired.”

The temporary workers were given temporary casual longshoremen cards in July to handle a major spike in container traffic.

They claim that during orientation classes they were urged to put in as many hours on the docks as possible even if it meant taking a leave of absence from other jobs because they would have an upper hand when permanent casual positions became available.

Martinez said he gave up a $16.75-per-hour job driving a forklift for a cargo container storage operation to become a temporary casual.

The PMA denied promising the temporary casuals any long-term job security.

“They were (only) offered 21-day temporary cards,” Sugerman said.

‘Lottery was tainted’

Some of the temporary casuals also question the list of 3,000 new hires, several of whom have identical last names and ZIP codes of union members and are chosen in exact or near sequence. “The mathematical probabilities are infinite,” said Payman Taheri, a Los Angeles attorney who said he had been hired by some of the temporaries. “The lottery was tainted. I think they wanted the full pie to themselves. They want all of their own people in.”

Sugerman said he did not know why the list contained so many similarities. “They were all drawn, one by one, from the bin and overseen by the area (labor and management) arbitrators and put into the system,” he said. “The numbers that were pulled from the large pool were equal to the numbers received from the industry. This was an incredibly open process with the goal of hiring a diverse and productive workforce and we believe we have done that.”

ILWU officials did not return calls.

Taheri filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Sept. 2. Besides the job issue, the suit demands the hours already logged be applied to temporaries’ seniority logs, which moves them closer to obtaining registered union member when those spots open.

“I ask two things: hire them as you promised and please do not put me up to the burden of initiating an action against you,” Taheri’s letter stated.

A permanent casual gets a starting pay of $20.66 per hour, incremental pay hikes topping off at the basic registered longshoreman rate of $28.68 per hour after logging more than 4,000 hours.

Temporary casuals do the most basic longshoreman work, including directing vehicle traffic at container terminals, placing “cones” under containers being stacked by cranes and “lashing” the stacks together with long steel bars that prevent the boxes from toppling over.

“There is a tremendous interest in these positions,” said Sugerman. “These are highly sought-after positions because of the compensation for those who become members of the registered workforce.”

ILWU members also get generous pensions and an average of $42,000 in health care coverage (that contains no co-pays) each year.

While hundreds of temporary casuals have lost their jobs, others such as Munoz have been notified they can obtain 21-day extensions. (All temporary cards come in 21-day increments.)

But the PMA has told them they will not be issued any additional extensions unless they sign a waiver claiming they understand they have no right to expect permanent work.

Taheri’s letter called the joint labor relations committee’s actions “morally despicable and unlawful” and warned that his client list is growing daily.