FERRY STRIKE COOLS CATALINA ON HOT SUNDAY

For tourists, sunbathers and snorkelers who made it to Santa Catalina Island on Sunday, it was a picture perfect day: Clear skies, warm temperatures, plenty of bicycles to rent and no lines at restaurants.

But for merchants waiting on the other side of the cash registers, the second day of a passenger ferry strike meant another sharp drop in business and short-term layoffs for dozens of employees.

With 100 employees of Catalina Cruises on strike since Friday night, many of the thousands who would normally cross the water for a warm August weekend were not there, merchants said.

“This is the slowest day of the year that I’ve had in nine years for August,” said Calvin McIlroy, owner of the Mexicali Inn restaurant. “It just hurts because we depend on the summer business to keep us open year round.”

At lunchtime, only one of the 64 seats in the restaurant was occupied and not by a tourist but by an islander, McIlroy said. “We should be packed right now.”

Business was off an estimated 30% Saturday and Sunday, said restaurant owners and managers of a bicycle shop.

But the effect of the first strike against Catalina Cruises in its 16 years of operation has been mixed at hotels.

The 10-bed Catherine Hotel was half empty Sunday even though it is usually filled, said manager Patti Huff. People who read about the strike probably assumed there was no reliable transportation to the island, she said.

But a representative of the two largest hotels said both were booked solid for the week. Two or three people canceled this weekend because of the strike, but they later called to say they would honor their reservations, said Linda Haas, an employee of the Pavilion Lodge and Hotel Atwater.

The strike sent also sent tourists scrambling for other means of transportation, including the struck company’s main competitor, Catalina Express, and to several charter helicopter and airplane firms.

Several people arriving on Sunday said they were notified Saturday night or that morning that their reservations on Catalina Cruises could not be honored because of the strike. At the San Pedro passenger ferry terminal, passengers were reporting massive tie-ups and traffic was backed up outside.

Despite some confusion, tourists already on the island did not expect much trouble getting home.

“Nobody has been stranded and no one will be,” said Sam Sacco, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based Crowley Maritime Corp., which operates Catalina Cruises.

The company was running two of its five 700-passenger ferries Sunday, striking deck hands said.

The company also was limiting the number of passengers to the island to under 50% of capacity to control the number of people who will need rides home, according to Catalina Cruises.

The chances of being stranded were reduced further when Catalina Express added another run to the island on Sunday, said Greg Bombard, company vice president and general manager. Catalina Cruises expects to be operating at full capacity by next weekend, Sacco said.

But for merchants of this resort town with a permanent population of about 2,200, word that the ferries would be returning in full force did little to brighten the short-term financial outlook.

August is the tourist season’s busiest month--a time that many count on for business to pay the bills through the slow winter months, said Gary Brown, owner of the Busy Bee restaurant, which overlooks Avalon Bay.

“This is what gets you through the winter,” Brown said. “Usually you couldn’t walk up and down the street on a day like this, it’s so jammed.”

On Sunday, there was plenty of room to walk along Crescent Avenue, and there were open patches of sand among the sunbathers stretched out near the pier. Brown said eight waitresses, dishwashers and cooks were being sent home for the day for the lack of customers.

From a law enforcement standpoint, the strike was not a problem.

“The pickets here have been well organized and very well behaved,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Denny Boyd said of the four strikers who carried signs in front of the Catalina Cruises ticket booth near the ferry dock.

“I was over there at noon, and the boys on the picket line were going over to get the people inside some ice cream cones,” Boyd said.

Bob Forrester, regional director of the Inland Boatmen’s Union, said the strikers planned to increase pressure on their parent company Sunday night by picketing other Crowley operations in Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors.

Union spokesman Marco Vuoso said Crowley owns a fleet of bunker barges, floating fuel stations that refuel ships in the two harbors.

“Starting at 10:30 p.m. Sunday night,” Vuoso said, “the Inland Boatmen will be picketing any ship that is refueled from a Crowley barge.”

Vuoso and Forrester said they believe that longshoremen will honor their picket line, refusing to load or unload those ships, because the Inland Boatmen’s Union is part of the same organization--the Marine Division of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union.

While Catalina Cruise spokesmen said the latest contract offer by the company was for a 15% reduction in wages, union representatives said the cuts would total 39%. The previous contract expired in January, and the union is willing to accept a wage freeze, said Richard Sayers, one of the striking boat captains.