Workers Escalate Fight Over Port Jobs

Venting their frustration with the U.S. Department of Labor’s alleged failure to enforce affirmative action laws on the waterfront, a group of disabled workers and military veterans asked Friday that a judge halt millions of dollars in government contracts to shipping companies in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The action is the latest development in a 6-year-old lawsuit to force a powerful association of shippers to adopt affirmative action plans that help handicapped workers and veterans obtain and keep jobs on the docks.

In late 1994, the case resulted in a court decision directing the Labor Department to enforce the law against the Pacific Maritime Assn., which negotiates and administers labor contracts for more than 100 shipping companies on the West Coast.

So far, court records show that department officials have done little more than study whether they have any authority over the organization--something U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon determined that they did have almost 3 1/2 years ago in a ruling that was highly critical of a government investigation into the maritime association.

“There has been a complete failure and total refusal to comply with these congressionally mandated requirements,” said Charles Fairchild of San Pedro, one of 20 disabled dockworkers and veterans who filed the case in 1992. “What the Labor Department is doing is criminal. The agency is supposed to uphold our laws, and they just haven’t done it.”

According to a motion filed Friday at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, the group wants a judge to intercede in the dispute and determine whether punitive measures should be taken against federal contractors that are members of the maritime association.

Under federal law, government contractors must comply with affirmative action statutes. Violations by companies that transport government cargo can result in termination of contracts, the withholding of contract payments or disqualification from receiving more government work.

“Without this action, a large class of disabled people and Vietnam-era veterans will be denied the opportunity to support themselves and become part of the rest of society,” said Richard W. Bauer, the dockworkers’ lawyer.

Attorneys for the maritime association contend that the organization is not responsible for implementing affirmative action plans on the docks because it is neither an employer nor a federal contractor. They say a system is already in place to employ handicapped and injured dockworkers.

Labor Department officials have declined to discuss the case because the lawsuit is ongoing. But Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, which is representing the department, said the agency will seek to dismiss the suit in early August.

Department officials believe they have fulfilled the requirements of Kenyon’s 1994 order, Mrozek said. Since May, the department’s civil rights division has been considering whether to file an enforcement action against the maritime association.

Mrozek declined to discuss the dockworkers’ new motion because the U.S. attorney’s office has not reviewed it yet.

The controversy surrounding the Labor Department began in 1989, when a group of disabled dockworkers from the county’s ports filed complaints with the department--the first of more than 30 grievances that would be lodged by 1990.

The complaints alleged that the Pacific Maritime Assn. and 15 shipping companies were violating the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Vietnam-era Veterans Readjustment Act. Those laws require employers to take steps to hire disabled workers and military veterans--both handicapped and able-bodied--and to make reasonable accommodations for them in the workplace.

At the time, shipping companies operating in Long Beach and Los Angeles held federal contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to move government cargo. Yet no affirmative action plans were in place for disabled dockworkers or veterans, the complaints charged.

In April 1991, the Labor Department opened an investigation. Two and a half years after the first complaints were filed, the agency concluded that the allegations had no merit. The disabled dockworkers sued the department, alleging that the inquiry was inadequate and depended on self-serving information from the maritime group.

Judge Kenyon, who is now retired, said in 1994 that the department’s conclusions were “wholly unreasonable” and the investigation “so cursory” as to be “a sham.”

In a written decision, he stated that the association was in effect the employer of 9,000 dockworkers because it administered labor contracts and was the hiring agent for shipping companies.

As such, Kenyon said, the association was subject to federal affirmative action laws, and he ordered the Labor Department to undertake a thorough investigation and enforce the law.

“To say [the maritime association] is not the agent of the companies, then thousands of jobs would escape regulation under the statutes,” Kenyon wrote.

The judge told the Labor Department to make progress reports to his court every 60 days. According to the reports, the department has spent almost 3 1/2 years trying to determine if it has legal authority over the association.

Despite the years of analysis, court records show that the department had determined in 1990 that it had the authority to investigate the shipping association.

And in a letter dated July 14, 1989, department officials in San Francisco told then-Rep. Glenn Anderson (D-San Pedro) that they had established jurisdiction over the association in order to resolve complaints.

“The delay by the Labor Department is inexplicable,” Bauer said Friday. “I just don’t understand why it has taken so long, given their resources and the previous decisions that they have jurisdiction over the Pacific Maritime Assn.”