Danger on the Docks : Longshoremen’s Deaths Lead Union, Industry to Re-Examine Safety in Era of Container Ships

One sunny morning last March, Eddie Medina and Ines Gaxiola boarded the M. S. Oriental Patriot docked at the Port of Long Beach. A heavy dew had fallen, and the two longshoremen walked slowly to avoid slipping as they traversed the tops of cargo containers stacked 32 feet high on the ship’s deck.

Working on opposite sides of the containers, backs turned to one another, the men used long poles to reach down and unfasten the boxes so a crane could later lift them ashore.

Medina didn’t notice his partner disappear.

“I don’t know what happened,” the dockworker recalled. “I never heard anything or saw anything.”

Medina discovered Gaxiola sprawled on the ship’s deck. He apparently had lost his footing and fallen. Carried unconscious from the dock, the 46-year-old San Pedro resident died at a hospital.

Three months later, longshoreman Steve Suryan was working on the M. V. Fver Lyric in Los Angeles Harbor. Shortly after midnight, as the 26-year-old Long Beach resident walked down a passageway, a crane became entangled in some cables left on the deck and lurched back. Suryan, pinned between the crane and a container, was crushed to death.

Gaxiola and Suryan were two of the five dockworkers killed at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports in the 12 months that ended in June. Three of the deaths occurred at the ports’ sprawling container cargo terminals. The other two occurred while steel was being handled. There have been no deaths since.

The five deaths follow a decade in which fatalities among longshoremen have ranged from one to three a year in Southern California, and they have raised concerns among union leaders, company officials and federal safety regulators. To varying degrees, they worry that technology--especially the container cargo revolution--has so changed the job of longshoremen that more training, new safety regulations and improved equipment may be needed.

But there are also concerns that new regulations recently adopted are hurting productivity.

Despite the recent increase in fatalities, employers say the number of accidents on the Los Angeles and Long Beach waterfronts has been declining. According to Pacific Maritime Assn. figures gleaned from reports by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, there were 12.6 injuries per 100 dockworkers that involved lost time at work in 1984, 20% lower than in 1980.

Longshoremen’s work has always been dangerous, company and union officials agree. Some areas, like steel handling, which accounted for two of the deaths, have changed little in recent years. But in some ways, the profession has grown more dangerous as the amount of cargo stowed in containers has increased, they say.

Before shippers took to using huge containers to transport cargo, a longshoreman unloading or loading a ship could expect to labor for days with the same regular gang of about 10 men, relying on a strong back, brute force and shared knowledge to carry bundles and boxes and crates.

Now he is more likely to be dispatched to a dock alone, to work a job he may never have done before.

At the same time, longshoremen who used to operate winches and forklifts are working the controls of large trucks or cranes 80 feet tall, capable of lifting 40-foot-long, 33-ton containers off ships three football fields long.

New Working Environment

“There has been a revolution in technology that has created a whole new working environment,” said Dave Arian, president of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union Local 13, which has campaigned for new safety rules. “The traditions that longshoremen have been used to working around have been radically altered, but the safety conditions have not.”

“The longshoreman today is not equipped or properly trained to deal with modern cargo-handling facilities,” said Dino Rossi, a vice president at Long Beach Container Terminal Inc., which employs hundreds of dockworkers through the union. “ . . . We really haven’t changed the set of working rules on the waterfront.”

The union and employers have agreed on several new safety measures in light of the three container-related deaths, and federal officials are considering new safety regulations.

The idea of hauling ocean cargo in containers is generally credited to shipping magnate Malcolm P. McLean, who in the late 1950s started transporting truck trailers on the unused decks of tanker ships. The concept was simple: Both time and money could be saved if cargo was placed in the trailers or other containers and loaded and unloaded directly from ships to trucks.

Over the decades, the amount of cargo carried in containers, which are generally 20 or 40 feet long, 8 feet tall and 8 feet wide, has grown rapidly, and now accounts for at least half of the general cargo moving in and out of the nation’s ports, according to Rex Sherman, a spokesman for the Virginia-based American Assn. of Port Authorities. (General cargo includes everything but bulk commodities such as grain, and large items such as automobiles.)

“It’s much faster,” Sherman said. “Let’s say in the ‘50s, with a 10,000-ton general cargo ship, you might be talking about four or five days to unload a ship using conventional methods. Now, with a container ship, we are talking about turnarounds of maybe a day or a day and a half.”

In recent years, the number of containers passing through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has increased substantially. The Pacific Maritime Assn., an employers group that represents 120 steamship, stevedoring and terminal operators on the West Coast, estimates the total amount of container cargo coming through Southern California ports, including San Diego, at 26.6 million tons last year, compared to 2.9 million tons in 1970. The association estimates that the 26.6 million tons represents more than half of all container cargo moving through ports in the western United States.

To handle the increase, the union local has boosted its membership. While other locals up and down the West Coast have lost members because of containers and other new technology--in San Francisco, for example, the number of longshoremen has decreased to 1,580 at present from 2,560 in 1975--the number in Los Angeles and Long Beach has increased from 2,558 to 2,770 during the same period.

4,000 ‘Casuals’

That work force is supplemented by 4,000 so-called casuals, who are not registered longshoremen but are dispatched to jobs at the two ports--without any formal training--when there are not enough longshoremen available. Casuals are dispatched to an average of 700 to 800 jobs a day at the ports, according to Terry Lane, Pacific Maritime’s Southern California area manager.

Largely because of the growth in container trade, the association has trained more longshoremen to operate specialized cranes and trucks. Since 1981, more than 300 longshoremen have been taught to operate cranes, receiving more than two weeks of instruction from experienced longshoremen, Lane said. Recently, about 350 newly hired longshoremen were given training for trucks used at container terminals.

Despite the two training programs, the union and employers admit that many dockworkers drive the trucks without prior instruction. They also say that as more longshoremen and casuals have been hired, it is not uncommon for them to be assigned to work aboard container ships although they have little or sometimes no experience on the vessels.

“I think that for so long we had a stable work force with guys skilled and who could do the job with a minimum of fuss that it gave us a sense of security in regard to safety that perhaps we shouldn’t have had,” said Jack Suite, Pacific Maritime’s West Coast director of training and accident prevention.

Federal and state job-safety officials, who have not determined whether a pattern to the recent deaths exists, say their agencies adopted safety rules in 1983 and 1984 specifically aimed at marine cargo terminals.

Both the state and federal Occupational Safety and Health Administrations issued citations to the employers of the men killed at the container cargo facilities, charging that unsafe conditions existed. The citations were for violations ranging from failure to properly train equipment operators to leaving unused equipment in the work area. The highest fine levied was $800.

Tom Butler, district manager for the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Long Beach, said that agency, which is responsible for enforcing safety onshore, is not considering revisions to its rules in the wake of the deaths. He said he is unaware of a situation in which the rules have been inadequate.

There is concern, however, among some in the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for enforcing safety regulations aboard ships, that its rules dealing with container vessels are not specific enough, according to James Guenther, a safety engineer with the agency’s San Francisco office.

“Mainly, (the rules) deal with the handling of the containers and not with employees’ safety,” Guenther said. For instance, while the agency’s rules specify where the weight of the container must be marked, they do not mention whether longshoremen should be required to wear safety harnesses while working on top of the containers, he said.

Rules Being Revised

Guenther said the federal agency is now in the early stages of revising its rules, which were written in the early 1970s before the large growth in container use, even though they were only adopted in recent years.

Arian, the president of the union local, said he believes that existing rules--both those agreed to by the union and employers, as well as state and federal regulations--have not been specific enough. In addition, he charges that employers have not systematically enforced safety rules, and have failed to retrain longshoremen to work aboard container ships and at the terminals.

Many longshoremen agree.

“My whole family has been on the waterfront all my life, but my personal background is in construction where we don’t touch anything without an apprenticeship,” said Dave Stamper, 30, who became a registered longshoreman in 1982. “But some of these kids get up there and are called out at night, and boom, you’re 18 or 19 years old and 50 or 60 feet high and you have never been out of your mother’s womb.”

“For every accident, I have seen at least 10 near misses,” said another longshoreman outside the union’s dispatch hall in Wilmington.

Some dockworkers point to the death of Benjamin Evans to illustrate their contention that workers are not being properly trained. The 48-year-old longshoreman was killed last October at Container Stevedoring Co. Inc. in Long Beach after he was accidentally run over by a truck driver who state OSHA officials say had not been properly trained to drive the vehicle. The company was fined $300 for failing to train the driver.

In the wake of the deaths and concerns that workers’ safety was being jeopardized, union local leaders in June called a 24-hour work stoppage at the two ports. Later, the local threatened to strike until employers agreed to 34 new safety rules at container terminals to supplement existing ones.

One new rule requires dockworkers who climb atop containers to wear safety harnesses to prevent falls; the old rule required only that employers have the harnesses if an employee wanted one. Another new rule aimed at preventing falls forbids a longshoreman to work next to an open hatch. Workers now have to remain the equivalent of 9 to 12 containers away from a crane--more than twice the previous distance allowed--to reduce the chances of being hit by the crane or a suspended container.

Despite the changes, Arian said he believes that the new rules do not address the fundamental changes that have occurred in the work force--mainly, that as containers have come to dominate the waterfront, the work gang structure among longshoremen has dissipated. He advocates gangs, which have declined in number at the local ports from about 60 in the early 1970s to 30 or 35, for working the container ships.

More People on Job

“What stabilized the longshoreman before is (that) he worked basically with the same gang unit,” Arian said. “He was taught by older longshoremen because he worked around them. There was more discussion and there were more people on the job.

“Now there is bare-bones manning and a lot of guys go on a job they have never been on before and there is nobody there, including the boss, to tell them how they should be working.”

In response, several employers complained that a gang system would require them to hire a certain number of dockworkers whether they were needed or not. Small stevedoring companies would be especially hard hit, they said.

Nevertheless, many employers agree that the job of longshoring, while always dangerous, can be more so now. When a safety rule is not followed and an accident occurs, they say, the potential for a serious injury or fatality exists because of the size of the containers and the equipment used to move them.

No Response to Change

Moreover, some employers maintain that the maritime industry as a whole has failed to respond to the changes in the workplace brought about by containers. “We as an industry have not looked at safety devices because we probably felt it would cut productivity,” said Edward DeNike, regional vice president for Stevedoring Services of America in Long Beach.

Indeed, other employers say the maritime industry is probably one of the slowest industries in adapting to technological change because of the large investments made by shipowners, stevedoring companies and others. For example, industry officials say container ships can cost tens of millions of dollars to construct, while cranes used to unload them carry a price tag of $3.5 million.

“It’s hard to modify items of high capital value,” said Rossi of Long Beach Container Terminal Inc. “You’re really locked into a slow degree of change.”

In addition, employers maintain that longshoremen, who work under an extensive set of rules and regulations, are protected by a contract that allows them simply to reject a particular job or to stop work if conditions appear unsafe. In the latter case--which rarely occurs, employers and longshoremen say--a union official or arbitrator is usually called to the site to settle the dispute.

Some company officials have also taken issue with the rules adopted after the deaths, Pacific Maritime says. Although John Jeffrey, president of Long Beach Container Terminal Inc., says the rules have had a negligible effect on operations at his firm, interviews with half a dozen other officials suggest that they have cut productivity by as much as 20% at some terminals.

“The rules were agreed to hastily under a very emotional set of circumstances following the death (of Suryan) in late June,” said Lane of the Pacific Maritime Assn.

“We have an obligation to safety, but we also have an obligation to get these ships in and out,” said DeNike of Stevedoring Services. “Shippers and steamship companies are disgusted. It is costing them a mint. They can’t believe we can’t do anything about it.”

Rossi said he believes that the union local, by emphasizing more safety rules, is tackling the issue the wrong way. He said the union and employers, some of whom have recently began experimenting with new platform devices aboard container ships to promote worker safety, should urge shipbuilders and other maritime equipment manufacturers to redesign or invent mechanisms that would make the job of working aboard container ships safer.”It is not really an employer or environmental problem. . . . we as an industry should go after the equipment people,” Rossi said.

Nevertheless, Arian said that in addition to the new rules he has requested that a union official be assigned to each work site to ensure that employers abide by them--an idea that Jeffrey labels featherbedding. And other longshoremen’s union officials on the West Coast say they intend to ask employers to agree to the same rules recently adopted in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Arian said.

Longshoremen interviewed say they support the union local’s drive to improve safety. But many are philosophical about the dangers in the job and do not expect conditions to change overnight. Still others say they try not to think about the dangers of working around containers.

“You just do it and think of Friday’s paycheck,” said Linda Hipsher, 30, who has worked as a casual for about a year.

“You try not to think about that,” said 37-year-old Eddie Medina, Gaxiola’s partner, “or you wind up doing what I’m doing--staying away from them.”

Medina has refused to work on a container ship since his partner was killed.