Wildcat Walkout to Cost Longshoremen Day’s Pay : Labor: Workers left their jobs after district attorney investigators tried to arrest a man at the union’s hiring hall.

More than 500 local longshoremen will lose one day’s pay for a wildcat walkout this month that began with the attempted arrest of one dockworker and led to the brief closure of Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors.

Under a settlement reached with waterfront employers, the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, Local 13, acknowledged that about 10% of its membership staged an illegal walkout Oct. 10 that closed the ports for 13 hours. The walkout, which idled about 30 ships carrying tens of millions of dollars in cargo, will cost the strikers about $200 each in wages.

At the same time, the Pacific Maritime Assn.--representing shippers, terminal operators and other waterfront employers--agreed that the union was justified under its contract in temporarily closing its dispatch hall when a melee erupted over the attempted arrest of one dockworker for failure to make court-ordered child support payments.

The walkout began when two investigators for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office entered the union hall in Wilmington on Oct. 10 to arrest Roy Neal, 49.

The investigators, armed with an arrest warrant, were in the hall for several minutes when they were ordered out by a union official, authorities said. Within minutes, authorities said, the investigators were surrounded by about 300 angry longshoremen and fled to an office inside the hall to call for help.

When Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and Los Angeles police officers arrived, the investigators were escorted from the hall, and officers arrested the union’s sergeant-at-arms, John Nappi, 65, of San Pedro, on suspicion of inciting a riot.

The confrontation and the arrest of Nappi so outraged dockworkers that union leaders within an hour ordered those longshoremen not to report to work and also told workers already on the job to go home. In all, one official said, 300 to 350 dockworkers on the swing shift and 200 on the graveyard shift participated in the walkout, which ended at 8 a.m. the next day.

Union officials did not return numerous calls about the walkout, but waterfront employers said the strike violated Local 13’s contract with the Pacific Maritime Assn. They said the association filed a labor grievance to have the action declared illegal.

The grievance prompted several meetings between union and association officials and led to a settlement that avoids the need for a hearing before a labor arbitrator, the employers said.

The settlement, according to Vince Lamaestra, assistant area manager for the association, acknowledges that the union was justified in temporarily closing the dispatch hall because events the night of Oct. 10 threatened the health and safety of workers.

But the settlement says the union’s decision to strike was not justified under the terms of Local 13’s labor contract, Lamaestra said.