LONG BEACH, Calif. — Until three days ago longshoreman Michael Ponce worked night shifts for 50 hours a week — and about $50,000 a year — operating forklifts or cranes to load and unload cargo from ships docking at one of the nation’s busiest ports, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The work — and the lifestyle — of longshoremen has changed much since the days when Marlon Brando portrayed the motorcycle-riding, ex-boxer Terry Malloy working on the corruption-riddled New York City docks in director Elia Kazan’s 1954 classic film “On the Waterfront.”
Now the challenge for these stevedores is to keep pace with technology or be left behind on the waterfront being modernized in an ever-busier new era of globalization. Today, thousands of longshoremen work around the clock, some days enduring California’s blistering heat, hefting and hauling trailer-sized cargo containers around sprawling ports like this one _ surrounded by giant cranes and towering piles of cargo.
All that changed this week when representatives of the port’s operators and shipping companies locked Ponce and thousands of other union longshoremen out of 29 major ports up and down the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle after management accused the union of staging a work slowdown amid negotiations on a new five-year contract.
On Wednesday, union longshoremen met with federal mediators in San Francisco in an effort to start talks aimed at ending the lockout, which threatens major disruptions of the nation’s struggling economy. Business groups and some lawmakers are calling on the Bush administration to intervene and end the lockout.
The dispute pits shipping companies trying to operate their businesses more efficiently, including eliminating jobs that might be done adequately with automation and high technology, against longshoremen dragging their heels over some changes and demanding to maintain as much control as they can over remaining jobs.
West Coast dockers who belong to the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) are among the best-paid blue-collar union members in the country. Depending on the skills required for the jobs they do _ tasks range from manual labor to the operation of massive cranes _ union workers are paid between $50,000 and $150,000 a year.
Ponce, 40, used to spend his days caring for his four young children and nights working heavy labor and operating forklifts to maneuver cargo around the ships that crowd the piers, many within yards of the Queen Mary _ the British luxury liner that now serves as a floating hotel in Long Beach. Some shifts, Ponce also operates a crane, a complicated and sometimes dangerous job, lifting trailer-sized containers off and onto cargo ships.
The ILWU has about 40,000 members internationally. The West Coast ports, with about one-quarter of the membership, handle about half of the nation’s ocean-going cargo.
“These guys handle toxic material, chemicals and other such cargo,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“This is dangerous work.”
Ponce, who belongs to Local 13 of the 10,500-member West Coast section of the ILWU, has had his life turned upside down by the lockout that began Sunday.
“It has been hardest on my wife,” he said. “I used to take care of the kids.”
The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents port operators and shipping companies, wants to introduce new technology at West Coast docks that the association says is essential to increase efficiency and handle a rapidly growing volume of Pacific cargo.
The association has accused the ILWU of refusing to negotiate on the technology, which involves use of video equipment, scanning devices and advanced computers to speed the flow of cargo through the ports. Now, much of the data is manually gathered and entered into computer systems by workers.
Tom Edwards, northern California director of the association, complained about the union’s attitude.
“We have already told the union that we would provide substantial enhancements to the pension package, and we will continue to discuss the issue,” Edwards said.
“Technology cannot be taken off the table. It is the core issue in these talks. We must modernize our terminals and bring our waterfront into the 21st Century. The union can’t turn back the clock.”
Though Ponce says he has nothing against technological changes being sought by the West Coast port operators, he wants to be sure that the jobs created by these change are handled by union workers.
“The technology is probably needed,” said Ponce. “We all agree. But any jobs created have to be union jobs.”
“I’m with technology,” he said. “I know we cannot go on without it.” Ponce and others said that the union had a history of accepting technological change, even at the cost of jobs.
“That was the case with containerization,” he said. “Containerization eliminated thousands of jobs, but it created better paying, higher skilled jobs. There is nothing different now. We want those jobs.”
He and other union members said that the ILWU wants to control the data on cargo containers and vehicles from the moment it is entered into computer system and thereafter, because they fear the shippers’ association eventually wants to outsource the management of the data to non-union companies.
Ponce, who serves on several union committees, said that video cameras would be used to monitor containers and trucks as they entered the ports and the data input remotely and some union officials fear that those jobs could eventually end up being done in foreign countries where low wage workers were numerous.
Lowell Peterson, an attorney who represented the Teamsters in a contract settlement with the United Parcel Service, sided with the union position.
“The union seems to be getting tarred as the guardian of an ancient featherbedding scheme. This is simply not accurate,” he said.
“The dockowners say they cannot compete because of the traffic backlogs caused by the current technology (which is more advanced than it was a generation ago). The solution to a traffic backlog is to hire more people to handle the traffic, not to pretend that the Internet will solve everything.”
Peterson suggested that management’s goal is to push to keep the union out of the new jobs, which would be created, something he said was becoming common.
He noted that phone companies are fighting hard to keep unions from representing workers in the cell phone and wireless part of that business. Bruno, the professor from UIC, said that the comparison to the era of containerization was apt.
“This is a union that is very sensitive to technology and how it affects the industry,” he said. “If it is an aid, something that makes work easier, it is welcome.”
He added that if the union saw the new technology as a tool to replace workers, they would perceive it as a threat.
“The dockworkers are not Luddites,” Bruno said. Technological change “is probably going to make some work obsolete. There should be a smooth transition. It should happen that way.”
He said that the ILWU had reason to be concerned over the possibility that the data control might eventually be outsourced.
“There are plenty (of workers) in the world who could do that,” Bruno said. “Unless you have some contractual agreement as to who is going to do that work, you begin to whittle down workers.”
Bruno added that the union understands the inevitability of changing technology. “Some of the work is going to be outsourced,” he said. “It is about the longshoremen getting the best deal they can”