City Rescinds Letter to Port Pilots; Talks Resume

Under intense pressure from the Los Angeles City Council, the Harbor Department on Friday withdrew its letter ordering striking port pilots back to work, and the two sides spent more than three hours at the bargaining table before scheduling another negotiating session for 3 p.m. today.

City officials and the president of the pilots union emerged from the union attorney’s Mid-Wilshire office building encouraged about the possibility of settling the 7-day-old strike. Union officials attributed the progress to the presence of high-ranking city officials, including Harbor Department Executive Director Larry Keller and City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie.

“I believe there should be no reason that we could not resolve all of the issues we went over tomorrow,” said union President Jim Larkins. “They have put people at the bargaining table who have the authority to resolve these issues. Today is the first day they have done that.”

But both sides said they had only tackled nonmonetary questions such as job security in the case of privatization, binding arbitration via a neutral party for grievances and protection during collective bargaining. Comrie and Keller may have to return to the City Council, or its Executive Employment Relations Committee, before trying to bridge the gap between the pilots’ request for a 72% raise over two years to $195,000 and the city’s last offer of a set of increases, totaling 17% over four years, to $133,000.

“We now have a full, detailed list of ideas and approaches,” Comrie said. “We’re in the bargaining process so I can’t say [much], but we’re talking, and that’s good.”

Keller added: “We got to know each other a little bit.”

During a lengthy closed-door discussion at City Hall earlier Friday, lawmakers told negotiators to try to settle the dispute with the tiny union, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 68, by focusing on nonmonetary issues. The council also expressed dismay at the letters delivered to the pilots Thursday, which described the strike as “unlawful” and said failure to return to work would be “deemed an act of insubordination.” That prompted one pilot to return, and the union to threaten to file a complaint of unfair labor practices.

“If they have some particular deal other than money, we would give it to them,” said Council President John Ferraro. “We’re trying to negotiate and settle an agreement here; we’re not trying to create a controversy.”

In the one-sentence letter to the pilots Friday, Keller wrote: “In a good-faith effort to facilitate further negotiations, our letter of July 17, 1997, is hereby rescinded in its entirety.”

“We had a very long and candid discussion,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who wanted the letter withdrawn. “Eventually [negotiators] recommended that it would be a good idea [to withdraw the letter]. We didn’t take a vote, they just said they thought it would be a good idea, and there was a lot of nodding and uh-huh-ing around the room.”

With the threat retracted, union attorney Elizabeth Garfield and pilots Larkins and Will Baumann were ready to talk. They joined Comrie, Comrie’s deputy Gordon Lawler and Keller--as well as two other unidentified men--in a glass-walled conference room on the sixth floor of the Wiltern building, where Garfield has her offices.

The pilots’ contract expired June 30. Sources close to the talks say job security in the face of privatization is a more crucial issue than pay to the pilots. Los Angeles is the only port in the nation in which pilots work for the government rather than a private contractor.

At the harbor Friday, Coast Guard officials said the return of one of the pilots had helped--but not solved--the backlog in ship traffic. The city also has two management pilots who have been guiding vessels in and out of port since the strike began last Saturday.

Of 19 scheduled arrivals, departures and shifts within the harbor Friday, officials said, the three pilots were expected to have accomplished 15 by day’s end.

“Business as usual would be ships moved on demand,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Mike Moore, chief of port operations. “They’re not going to be able to do moves on demand with three guys.”

From their post on a lonely outcropping at the southern edge of the harbor, a few striking pilots recently watched the towering cargo vessels glide through the water a few hundred feet away. They listened to a radio scanner crackle with the voices of the three working pilots. And they waited.

“I hate being on strike,” said pilot Brett Wakefield, 47. “But we have no choice. We’re between a rock and a hard place.”

Times staff writer Jodi Wilgoren contributed to this story.