Frank Riley is Vice-President of the Ship Clerks section of the famed Longshore Union…and not a man to be trifled with. He’s not just coping with employers aiming to farm out work, he and his coworkers are quite literally on the front lines of the war against terror, working to keep our ports safe.
Published: February, 2004
Frank RileyVice President, Ship Clerks’ Association
ILWU Local 34
Local 34 represents marine clerks and office clerical workers in the Northern California. We’re part of the Longshore Union, the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union).
Before I get to what I do, let’s list the various types of jobs on the docks. We’ll start with a walking boss. A walking boss, or a foreman, assigns longshoremen to a piece of equipment, assigns them to their gangs, and makes sure the men are properly performing their work. Management deals with walking bosses, and the walking boss in turn deals with Longshore people. Here in the Bay Area there are probably about 80 and 100 walking bosses in Local 91.
There are about 2,000 Longshoremen in Local 10, and in Local 34, there are approximately 300 members. We receive and deliver cargo, containers, and other equipment on the waterfront. We access all this information from computers. We control the flow of cargo to and from the ship.
On the management side, there’s the PMA, which stands for the Pacific Maritime Association. It’s a nonprofit organization that is comprised of most of the shipping companies on the West Coast. PMA negotiates the contract with the ILWU.
I joined up in ’88, transferring from another maritime union. It took awhile. On my days off, working for a tugboat company, I used to go down to the Longshore Hall. I had to wait a long time and work pretty hard before I got in. Come to think of it, I’ve been working pretty hard ever since, too.
People have some wrong ideas about where we stand. In fact, the ILWU has a history of flexibility and cooperation with management. Year’s back, when we saw the change coming from break bulk cargo, where cargo is handled piece by piece, to containers, we took the bull by the horns. We led the way making the West Coast the most productive ports in the nation, even agreeing to downsize our own locals along the way through modernization and mechanization, known to us as the M&M agreement.
Now there’s technology. When I started, everything was handwritten, the documents that confirmed the arrival or the departure of the equipment or the cargo. There was face-to-face interaction between us and the truckers picking up containers.
The employer has the right to introduce technology if the technologies truly replace a worker’s job. What’s not OK is if they just want to shift the job overseas or someplace without unions, or a cheaper workforce like Salt Lake City, Houston, and other countries like Costa Rica and India.
Since I started in 1988, I’ve lived through the introduction of computers to the docks. Before, everything was either handwritten or face-to-face interaction. We used to know the truck driver by name, you’d know who he was working for. You’d actually have a rapport and a relationship with them.
So now interaction between the clerks and a trucker is over a speakerphone with a camera and a video screen that may show written or detailed directions on where to take the cargo. The employers overall have generally not taken in consideration the various ethnicities of the truck drivers, the difference and accents of their language.
So now the trucker is trying to be understood across a speakerphone to someone maybe 500 yards away, or the clerk on the second floor of an office building, and there’s no – you may not be able to connect exactly what the individual wants because you don’t have that one-on-one contact.
We want the employers to help this problem by introducing touch screens or other technological improvements to help the truck drivers. For security reasons alone, it’s important. But the employers don’t want to spend the money, or maybe they want to drive a wedge between the drivers and us. Which is really unfair, because we strongly identify with the problems the drivers face.
The truckers used to be all Teamsters, but in the ‘70s and early ‘80s that all changed. The shipping companies went to independent contractors so the status quo now is that it’s almost all nonunion guys, low-income immigrant workers.
What we see is that the independent trucker has a dilemma, and that is that he does not get paid by the hour. He gets paid by the load. And our view is that the rates are extremely low. Below minimum wage at the end of the day, by the time you take in insurance costs, fuel costs, repair costs, traffic. They’re very underpaid. That doesn’t even include the cost of medical benefits for their families
So frustration sets in, on our side and with the truckers. We want the truckers to know we’re on their side and we’re setting up familiarization meetings, on-the-job get-togethers to cut down on harassment, those types of things. I would like to work together again like in the old days. The ILWU is all about harmony with people working their way up in American society. I mean, the ‘34 strike was won in large part because Harry Bridges created a pact with the black churches of San Francisco.
We’re also big on the issue of traffic in the Bay Area. Trucks moving out of the Ports in the Bay Area should go at night whenever possible to cut down on traffic. We’re all for that, in fact, our contract calls for closing down just five days of the year, Christmas, New Year’s, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Bloody Thursday, which is July 5th. Otherwise, we’re ready to work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
The problem is places like Wal Mart, one of the biggest destinations for cargo, won’t stay open late to accept their deliveries due to the increased cost.
We’re 100% behind the idea of expanded ferry service. It’ll increase our ranks, and will relieve traffic congestion. Our affiliate, the Inland Boatmen’s Union has been in the lead on this since Day One.
Air pollution generated by ships and trucks, water pollution problems with the residents of West Oakland, we also worry a lot about these things. We aim to work more closely with environmentalists on these issues. We already belong to a big dredging coalition, but we want to do even more.
And, of course, port security is on everyone’s mind, most of all us; we’re working right there. We also want to protect our country. We’re right there. We’re the front line.
We’re the ones that are helping to look for the dirty bombs. We want to make sure that the cargo and containers are properly documented when it goes out on our freeways. It’s not just terrorists, hazardous materials and big rig accidents are a huge concern.
What’s actually changed on the docks since 9/11? We have to provide identification to get access on the terminal. They control the crewmembers from the ships more. But overall they pay more attention to the workingman than to the cargo...
But as for dramatic changes, I don’t see it, no. The interesting part about the inspections is that our employers chose not to inspect containers at five terminals. Nobody checks the cargo or empty containers coming in or going out at all. I can’t think of any other reason than moneysaving…
The employer has done two things. They’ve eliminated the physical interaction by removing the actual person who can look at that container number, or he can check that seal, or he can open up the door and look in that container to see if it’s empty.
Their motivation, which started way before 9/11, was to harness technology to reduce manpower, because there’ll be an increasing profits. They’ve shifted that work over to the use of cameras, but we know that on most terminals you can’t view all four sides of the container. You can’t verify that it’s the proper hazardous material placard on a 40-foot container. The camera can only see a portion of it.
Our members are where the rubber meets the road on port security. If our employers really want to make things safer they should be talking to us. But that cuts into their profits
You may wonder about the bumper sticker I’m holding up which says, “Wal-Mart sucks”. Now, Wal-Mart products make up a large percentage of the containers that our guys move for a living. A huge amount. It’s my understanding that Wal-Mart could own its own fleet of ships. But the only problem with it is they would be full from the Far East and empty going back, so it’s not worth it to them…
So you could say we’re biting the hand that feeds us. But our beef with Wal-Mart is their treatment of workers, the low pay, and the overseas exploitation issue…
Wal-Mart employees are very under-paid and they get lousy benefits. There have been reports where they’re required to work overtime without pay just to keep their jobs. We want all workers to get a good enough living wage that they can live here in the Bay Area. And we walk our talk about it too.
