Harbor Trucking Standoff Continues

A labor standoff at the nation’s busiest harbor complex lurched into its fourth day Thursday as thousands of truckers stood idle and shippers watched stacks of stranded freight containers slowly rise.

The access roads and loading lots at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach barely rustled under the morning fog, but shippers said operations appeared to pick up modestly over Wednesday, estimating that truck traffic was between 30% and 50% of normal.

Many of the truckers were willing to return to work, but shipping companies were balking at hiring the formerly independent drivers now that thousands have joined a new labor-leasing firm that is demanding higher wages.

The relatively few trucks that did show up were independents who had not signed up with the new union-affiliated company. They were able to transport more cargo because they did not have to wait in the lengthy lines that normally snarl harbor streets and could make twice as many pickups, said Jay Winter, president of the Steamship Assn. of Southern California, a trade organization.

Shippers such as “K-Line”--Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd.--said they had beefed up dockside rail cargo operations to speed imported freight destined for the Midwest and East Coast. But cargo intended for Los Angeles-area consumption can only be delivered if enough truckers show up.

Gunnar Gose, transportation manager for K-Line, said a number of the trucking companies it contracts with had transferred independent drivers from San Diego and the San Francisco area to help move freight containers. One trucking firm, Distribution Services Ltd. Transportation, said it had diverted 24 directly employed drivers from its local delivery circuit to supplement its harbor work force, which shrank this week from 80 to 30. Other firms have called in reinforcement drivers from as far away as Arizona and New Jersey, according to officials who attended a California Trucking Assn. meeting Thursday.

The arrival of those truckers could dim prospects that the newly formed Transport Maritime Assn., a labor-leasing firm that said it has 5,300 formerly independent drivers, will corner the harbor market.

Still, the atmosphere at both ports was subdued Thursday as thousands of the formerly independent drivers stayed off the job. As independent contractors, the truckers owned their rigs, were responsible for repairs and were paid by the load. But since they signed on with the new firm, which offered to pay $25 hourly wages and to purchase or lease their rigs, only about 50 drivers have been dispatched to pickups, said Donald L. Allen, the firm’s president. He said the drivers hauled freight for three companies, but declined to name them. About 1,500 drivers trekked to a yard in Fontana to have their rigs appraised for sale to the new company.

The firm’s new employees have joined with hundreds of directly employed drivers, who are members of Local 9400 of the Communications Workers of America union, in protesting what they consider inefficiency in terminal operations and low wages.

Port police reported scant picketers at the Hanjin Shipping Co. terminal and other sites, and no incidents of violence. LAPD Lt. Pat Conmay, who runs a team of cargo and auto theft investigators, had not visited the ports but said the labor tension could deter freight thieves because of all the attention focused on the terminals.

Outside the Hanjin terminal at the Long Beach port Thursday morning, four men carried union placards while one held a clipboard and wrote down the license plate numbers of trucks passing through the gates. Union protesters earlier this week had used video cameras to record passing trucks at other terminals. Trucking company officials said many drivers stayed home, fearing violence after incidents of slashed tires and broken windows on their vehicles.

Port officials said they considered the slowdown the result of a private labor-management spat and would not intervene.

“There is, in my mind, nothing we can do on either side,” said S. R. Dillenbeck, director of the Long Beach port. He said he thought the standoff might last another week.

The central question for trade and labor officials is whether the new firm will succeed in recruiting a controlling share of the harbor area’s truckers. If it does, trucking firms complain, they will be forced to pay higher rates to lease drivers and trucks.

“The whole campaign is to take so many harbor drivers off the market that they control it,” said Phil Clarke, president of South Gate-based DSL Transportation.

Clarke said even the formerly independent truckers who signed on with the new firm are being held hostage in the standoff because few if any have been dispatched.

Even if they are, shippers said, the twin harbors, which comprise the third-largest port complex in the world, do not move enough freight to support work for 5,000 truckers.

But Allen, president of the new firm, insisted that there would be. He said the company, backed by a $125-million investment from English financiers, would pay out about $40 million to supply late-model, used rigs to the truckers, who would be dispatched on a rotated schedule to ensure that each works a certain number of hours. He acknowledged that many of the harbor’s larger trucking firms are “nervous” about his venture and have refused to lease his employees.

“It’s like a giant poker game,” he said.