Auto Imports and Employment: : Southland, Unlike Detroit, Has a Reason to Cheer
It was the trip the odometer never talked about.
Through three countries, across more than 5,000 miles of ocean and down immeasurable stretches of highway, Ken Cosgrove’s car made its way to his garage.
And two coastlines and a pair of seaports later, the new, white 1987 Acura Legend Coupe finally got there--its mileage gauge never flinching, never recording the voyage.
So it goes with Japanese imports. Month after month, shipload after shipload, thousands are ushered through West Coast ports almost daily, their odometers never telling of the days-long voyages they make from Japan to U.S. ports.
Last year’s journey of Cosgrove’s car, typical of the route an import takes to the United States, is one of those voyages:
May 8, 1987: After rolling off production line No. 2 in Honda’s Saiyama assembly plant, where Honda builds its upscale Acura models, the car is promptly sprayed with a wax-based protective coating known as Cosmoline and then is parked outside to await inspection.
May 9: After an inspection the following day by Honda production inspectors, it is trucked to a shipping port in Chiba, Japan, and placed in a “load line” to wait with other cars bound for the United States. Here begins the voyage to Southern California.
May 28: Nineteen days after Cosgrove’s Acura is moved into the Chiba port, stevedores drive the U.S.-bound car--along with the others in the load line--onto a Continental Ship Lines car-carrying freighter and park them in the spots they will occupy for the entire journey.
May 28-June 10: For 14 days the ship sails, stopping only in Vancouver, Canada, to unload a group of Acuras bound for Canadian dealerships.
Finally, on June 10, the cars arrive in the port of Long Beach, where a harbor pilot guides the ship near shore.
At the port, Cosgrove’s vehicle is unloaded by a group of stevedores from Pasha Services, a firm that also stores the Acuras until the dealers pick them up. Almost immediately after it comes off the ship, U.S. Customs agents conduct a spot inspection.
Like most Customs inspections, this one is brief, and Cosgrove’s car is quickly driven to Pasha’s storage compound.
Pasha inspectors give the car its third check and then move it into delivery lines, where truck drivers from Import Dealer Services, a Long Beach trucking firm, will pick them up.
At the Pasha storage area, car manufacturers are charged 55 cents a day per car for storage.
June 11: The dealer that ordered the car, Santa Anita Acura, receives an invoice for it from a Pasha employee dispatched to notify dealers of the arrival.
June 15: A trucker from Import Dealer Services checks the car for any damage, then loads it onto his rig, along with other vehicles bound for Santa Anita Acura.
On the car’s arrival, inspectors from the dealership check it over. Assured that there is no damage to the car, other employees at the dealership wash off the Cosmoline and prep it for sale.
June 17: Ken Cosgrove arrives at Santa Anita Honda and makes the deal for the car.
“I actually drove it home on June 20,” said Cosgrove, the executive vice president of Orange National Bank. “I’ve enjoyed having it, too. The styling and service are fantastic. I’ve spent more time in parking lots talking to people than ever before. It’s a fun car.”
And for many--especially those in Southern California’s service sector--such cars are also a source of livelihood. Indeed, the shipment of Japanese cars accounts for thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports.
Of the more than 2 million Japanese passenger cars imported to the United States last year, about 850,000 passed through the local ports.
Port of Long Beach officials said car imports generate work for about 5,000 harbor laborers and nearly 200,000 service workers inside the harbor and out.
Jeff Leong, a spokesman for the Port of Los Angeles, said about 3,200 jobs are involved in importing and exporting cars there.
Big Source of Revenue
“The overwhelming majority of those are through imports,” Leong said. He said importation of cars accounted for 11.8%--or nearly $12 million--of the port’s shipping revenue last year.
“The imports are certainly important to us,” said Michael Slavin, director of finance for the Port of Long Beach. “Last fiscal year, we brought in about $9.5 million off of autos. Anytime you have something bring in 10% of your revenue, I’d say it’s a major source.”
But even as Southern California benefits from the shipment of cars in this country, cities such as Detroit suffer.
“These port jobs aren’t sufficient to cover the losses in . . . manufacturing throughout the rest of the country,” complained Ray Windecker, the research and analysis manager at Ford Motor Co.
“In the absence of reciprocal trade with Japan, the port jobs cause an imbalance in jobs here,” he added. “It’s not that they are benefiting at the expense of other workers, but the system of trade causes the imbalance.”
Japanese car makers acknowledge that the jobs created in the United States by car imports haven’t offset losses suffered by American auto workers, but they say the process has helped American labor.
“And Honda and the other Japanese auto companies are committed to U.S. labor,” said Mike Spenser, a Honda spokesman. “Certainly it takes more people to run a factory than to operate shipping. But that’s one of the reasons the Japanese companies are building more factories here.”
Jobs Depend on Imports
Still, the port-bound beneficiaries of Detroit’s biggest threat claim they don’t care about how they are perceived in Motown.
They’re too busy being thankful.
“Without the imports, we don’t have a business,” said Bill Sisco, whose firm, Distribution Auto Services, adds accessories to Nissan vehicles as well as other foreign cars passing through the port of Los Angeles. “We employ about 150 to 200 people (in the firm’s Los Angeles office). Their jobs are totally dependent on the import.”
Others seemed irritated by what they see as an insinuation that they care less about the country than those opposing imports.
“Hell, I’m a veteran,” said Lawrence Kessler, the general manager of Pasha. “I know I’m not unpatriotic. But I also know you can’t be isolationist. If someone in Detroit would allege that we’re taking their jobs, they should look on the streets of California. “Someone is buying these cars.”
