Strike Halts Loading of Ship Bound for Gulf

A cargo ship bound for the Persian Gulf has been idled in Los Angeles Harbor by a strike among its foreign crew, leaving thousands of tons of military equipment and supplies awaiting another vessel or an end to the walkout, port and military officials said Thursday.

The strike, which began early Wednesday morning, has already put the Trident Baltic, owned by a Kuwaiti shipping company, at least two days behind schedule in carrying equipment to American troops in the gulf. That delay, though troubling, will have no effect on Operation Desert Shield, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman.

“We’re concerned, clearly, but we think it can be resolved,” said Marge Holtz of the Military Sealift Command. The delay in shipping the equipment, Holtz said, could be overcome if the Trident or another cargo ship is quickly loaded at the port and sails for the gulf.

The strike by the ship’s 30-member crew, most of them Filipinos, was blamed by local maritime and union officials on a dispute over wages. “They said they haven’t been paid, so they shut the power off on the ship,” said one local longshoreman, who asked not to be identified.

The ship’s business agent, Hans Bormann of New Orleans-based Sunrise Shipping Inc., refused comment. However, others familiar with the strike said it began just after midnight Tuesday as members of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union, Local 13, were loading the vessel at Terminal Island’s Berth 221.

After loading an estimated 500 tons of equipment, including 20 large military trucks, the longshoremen were unable to continue their work when the ship’s crew turned off the power, said Scott Ulrich, a business agent for the union.

A representative of Stevedoring Services of America Inc., which contracted for crews to load the ship, notified the longshoremen that they could leave when it became clear they would not have the electricity needed to run the winches and other equipment, a Stevedoring Services spokesman said.

“We just told them to go load other ships,” said the spokesman, referring to two other vessels that were scheduled to leave the port today. Those ships--the Panamanian Cumbrian Express and the West German Heide Leonhardt--are the latest of a dozen cargo vessels to leave the harbor for the Persian Gulf since the Mideast crisis began.

After the crew prevented the loading of the Trident Baltic, which arrived here from South Korea, the ship was moved from its berth to an anchorage in the harbor.

By late Thursday, neither local officials nor the Military Sealift Command would estimate when the vessel would be loaded. If the wage dispute is not resolved, they said, another ship will be used to transport the equipment to the gulf.

“It’s hard to say what will happen. This is the first time this has occurred” during Operation Desert Shield, Holtz said. The command has about 250 ships involved in the military operation, she said.

For years, members of Congress and some Pentagon officials have warned that the nation’s military power has been compromised by a decline in the U.S. merchant marine and reliance on foreign-flagged vessels. The Military Sealift Command and the Bush Administration have rejected that argument, but the Mideast crisis has put the issue into new focus.

As they moved to other ships loading for the Middle East, many longshoremen pointed to the idle Trident Baltic as an example of the nation’s over-reliance on foreign vessels. “It’s a shame we’re in the position where we have problems with a foreign crew and a foreign ship interfering with supplies for our troops,” said Gene Bandi, secretary-treasurer of Local 13.

“But we have no fleet left in this country, and the U.S. government is grappling for any kind of ship right now,” Bandi said.