City Seeks Injunction as Pilots' Strike Shuts Port

By DOUGLAS P. SHUIT, JODI WILGOREN and JEFF LEEDS

July 15, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

As a dozen harbor pilots held the nation’s second-largest port hostage in the third day of a strike that is costing Los Angeles taxpayers $437,000 a day, city officials went to court Monday to try to force the employees back to work.

After a brief hearing behind closed doors, Superior Court Commissioner Anita Rae Shapiro told attorneys for both sides that she would rule this morning on the city’s request for a temporary restraining order against the tiny port pilots union.

Separately, the private Pacific Maritime Assn. will return to federal court this morning along with the National Labor Relations Board to try to stop the pilots’ picketing at three commercial terminals. The picketing has triggered a sympathy strike by 1,500 dockworkers who refuse to cross the picket lines to unload ships’ cargo.

Participation by the dockworkers’ International Longshore and Warehouse Union is key to shutting the harbor down. The city has two supervisors willing to fill in for the striking pilots, but without the dockworkers the harbor’s lucrative cargo business is at a standstill.

Cruise ships and oil tankers were allowed to move Monday, and military cargo was loaded and unloaded without disruption. But private companies estimate losses of $50,000 a day for each cargo load sitting in the harbor.

With 11 ships stuck in the port, eight more waiting to dock and 20 scheduled to arrive over the next four days, Mayor Richard Riordan and key members of the City Council emerged from an emergency strategy session Monday determined not to cave in to the pilots’ demand for a 72% pay increase over two years, which would put their annual salary at $195,000.

“The amount they’re requesting is absurd, and the taxpayers of Los Angeles should not--will not--tolerate this,” Riordan said. “We’ve offered them what we’ve offered the other [city] employees, and [the other employees] have accepted. They should take it and get back to work.”

City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie said that, as public employees, the pilots violated the city’s collective bargaining rules and state law by striking instead of pursuing mediation and fact-finding, a proceeding overseen by a neutral third party.

In court papers, the city claims that the strike “presents a significant risk to the health and safety of our citizens” as well as a “severe disruption of the economy.”

The pilots “turned out the lights on the economic well-being of this municipality, and of the thousands of workers whose jobs depend on port commerce,” attorneys for Los Angeles argued. “The public interest demands that no group of government employees, whatever their number, be allowed through concerted action to bring about these intolerable consequences.”

Already among the city’s highest-paid workers, with annual salaries of $113,712, the pilots play an obscure but crucial role in making the city’s premier economic engine run.

Every time a ship comes into port, a pilot must travel out in the open sea via speedboat to meet it, then climb rope ladders to board. The vessels are often as long as three football fields and freighted with 6,000 containers. Once aboard, the pilot goes up to the bridge, often four or five stories high, to guide the ship to dock.

Each craft is unique, and the pilots must steer the massive machines past weekend sailors, Coast Guard patrol boats, cocktail cruise ships and chemical storage tank farms, then ease the ships to a wharf ever so gently.

“Pilots are paid for their skill, and it is a skill that takes years to develop,” said Jim Larkins, a full-time ship’s pilot and president of the local union.

To get licensed, pilots must pass rigorous examinations. One test asks them to draw, from memory, a detailed map of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, including all the channels’ twists and turns, depths at various points, landmarks and terminals. Then they spend two years learning how to operate cruise ships, tankers and container vessels.

“It gets down to what you are worth,” said Capt. Joseph Silva as he carried a union sign Monday morning outside the port’s Matson terminal, one of three where strikers picketed.

Silva, 52, first went to sea at 18. He started work for the city in 1979.

“It’s pretty intense out there,” he said. “Things can go wrong in a hurry.”

Cmdr. Mike Moore, chief of port operations for the Coast Guard, said the pilots are key to port safety because so many of the ships coming to Los Angeles have foreign captains.

“Their expertise gives us a big measure of comfort,” he said. “We know that the people who are piloting the ship speak English and know this port.”

The pilots’ contract expired June 30. Before the walkout, the union members demanded $195,000 a year, which is the average salary for pilots at large commercial ports across the nation, according to a benchmark study by Mercer Management Consulting.

The 1996 study, commissioned by a pilots group in San Francisco, found that comparable workers at 16 major American ports earn base salaries of $134,000 to $270,000. Savannah, Ga., offers the highest salary, and New York’s port has the lowest pay for pilots.

Elizabeth Garfield, an attorney for the union, noted that the city of Los Angeles has hired Mercer to do similar studies.

But Los Angeles officials said the figure is just too high for a government to pay. Pilots at all other ports work for private companies.

Indeed, $195,000 is $35,000 more than the harbor’s general manager makes, more than twice the salary for City Council members and a hefty chunk above the wages for the police chief, the fire chief, the airport director and Comrie, who plays a key role in contract negotiations.

“Their demands are just totally outrageous,” said City Councilman Joel Wachs, who sits on the Executive Employee Relations Committee, which handles labor relations.

The city has offered the pilots increases of about 17% over four years, which would bring their salaries to $133,000. Comrie said the total compensation package on the table, including benefits and overtime, would be worth about $200,000; the package the union has outlined, he added, totals about $300,000.

Total compensation packages, including medical benefits, life insurance, retirement and travel, ranged from $164,000 in New York to $325,000 in Savannah, with an average of $230,000, according to the Mercer study. Adjusting the packages for costs of living in various locales, the study places the average at $303,000 a year, with New York and San Francisco at the bottom with $172,000, and Savannah’s package rising in value to $439,000.

The pilots last walked off the job in 1990, striking for a weekend over disputes about safety regulations. But the current labor crisis is not the first to rankle the Los Angeles harbor recently.

Dockworkers have staged several protests over a new coal processing facility, the Los Angeles Export Terminal, contending that coal dust in the air creates a hazardous work environment. Union members also fear that the terminal’s owners, including the city, will hire nonunion workers.

Last year, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were crippled when thousands of truck drivers who haul cargo containers to and from the harbor boycotted their jobs for more than two weeks. The drivers, independent contractors who are paid by the load, tried to unionize, but their efforts failed after trucking companies found replacement drivers.

Harbor Commission President Leland Wong said Monday’s activity makes him question the wisdom of having pilots on the payroll rather than contracting with a private company, as other ports do.

“This does raise questions about whether it is in our best interest to continue in the business or to get out of the business,” Wong said. “The ability to move goods and to have free trade--the national importance of what the port represents--is being stalled right now. From a competitive standpoint, this does not shed a very positive light on us.”

While harbor officials grappled with delays and rapidly rising costs in San Pedro, city officials at neighboring Long Beach harbor, Los Angeles’ chief rival, were happily counting the 12 ships being unloaded by union dockworkers in its terminals.

“It’s been business as usual, thank God,” spokeswoman Yvonne Avila said.

Long Beach has contracted with a private, nonunion piloting firm for about 75 years. Company officials declined to release the exact wages paid to its pilots, but said they are “very similar” to the Los Angeles pilots’ current salaries.

Long Beach officials said they would not allow ships headed for Los Angeles to dock in their city for fear of angering the dockworkers union. “They’ve got big, big brothers,” said longshoreman Rudy Vanderhider, walking a picket line outside the Harbor Department’s headquarters in San Pedro.

“This is a multibillion-dollar entity down here. The port is making humongous profits,” said longshoreman David Ross, walking the picket line with Capt. Doug Rill, one of the pilots. “There are only 12 of these guys. Their expertise and skill should be paid for.”

A local machinists’ union is also supporting the strike.

Outside the Matson terminal, about 20 trucks were lined up, blocked by the closed gates. They sat idle, with no dockworkers to load their beds.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Port Pilot Profile

Here are job requirements and pay information for the 12 pilots whose strike has crippled cargo operations at Los Angeles Harbor:

Duties

Navigate vessels throught he narrow waterways of L.A. Harbor.

Experience Required:

* Coast Guard certification as a master or chief mate.

* Three years piloting experience at a major U.S. port.

* Three years experience as a master of a tugboat within San Pedro Bay.

* Good eyesight, physical shape.