Longshoremen OK Spouses on Docks : Local Sued by Members’ Wives Decides They Can Work Too

The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union Local 13 in Wilmington has dropped efforts to keep spouses of its members from working on the docks, officials said Tuesday.

In exchange for the union’s agreement to register 32 women and one man who had been kept out of the jobs by a no-spouse rule, several of the wives dropped a marital status discrimination suit.

Eight wives are being registered as marine clerks while 24 other wives and the husband of one current union member will be longshore workers, loading and unloading ships.

Court Change Failed

Attorney Louis J. Henry, who represented the wives, said the settlement came after the union failed to have the case moved from state court to federal court on the grounds that the plaintiffs had alleged sex discrimination.

“We only alleged marital discrimination,” Henry said.

A case involving a no-spouse rule already is pending in the state courts, and union officials said the longshoremen’s matter probably would not have been heard in state court until a state appellate court rules in the first case. Prospects of a long wait and mounting claims for back pay reportedly led to the willingness to settle.

Protests Over Nepotism

In the meantime, last January’s protests by part-time longshoremen over what they saw as union favoritism and nepotism in the registration of 350 new workers has faded, according to Local 13 President Dave Arian and Terry Lane, Southern California manager for the Pacific Maritime Assn. employers’ group.

“Some of those same people have subsequently been registered,” Lane said. “We intend to register additional people, so anyone who feels he hasn’t been given a chance will have one.”

Arian said the union has “established a pretty fair casual (part-time) system and a pretty fair registration process. Most people realize they have an opportunity.”

Those protests prompted the union to install the no-spouse rule that in turn brought on the lawsuit.