Longshore Workers Double as Port Panelists

They combine the role of boss and worker, administrator and laborer.

Together, the three longshoremen who form a majority on the Port of Hueneme’s harbor commission are unique: At none of the other 108 ports in 28 states and five U.S. territories do the laborers who work the docks also run the port.

“It’s the only one now,” said Rex Sherman, chief researcher at the American Assn. of Port Authorities in Virginia. “And I think that it may be the first ever.”

Longshoremen have served on harbor commissions before. The union’s founding president, Harry Bridges, was appointed a San Francisco harbor commissioner. Current longshore international President Brian McWilliams holds the same post.

But Jess Herrera, Jesse Ramirez and Bill Hill comprise the largest voting bloc on the five-member Hueneme commission. Which raises an inevitable question. Isn’t there something wrong with this arrangement?

How can these blue-collar bosses make policy for the only deep-water port between Los Angeles and San Francisco without favoring their wharf-side colleagues?

That is what opponents asked when Ramirez became the first longshoreman to win an Oxnard Harbor District election in 1992, when Herrera joined him as a commissioner in 1994 and when Hill was elected in 1996.

The same question arose when two Teamster forklift drivers stopped work at the port for a day in a dispute over wages last year and when longshoremen nationwide staged a one-day walkout two months ago.

“It poses a dilemma,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), active for years in Port of Hueneme issues. “How do you negotiate with yourself? It must be very difficult for them to not get confused about which hat they are wearing at any given time.”

But harbor officials say such concerns are unfounded.

“We asked our legal counsel about conflicts early on,” said port Executive Director Bill Buenger. “And he said there is no inherent conflict.”

That is because the commission is essentially a manager of port land and facilities. Harbor commissioners rarely vote on issues directly affecting the working conditions of longshoremen. Nor do harbor commissioners have a role in negotiating an end to union-called work stoppages.

“I can’t think of any issue that’s come to the board that’s created a conflict of interest,” said Herrera, who is in his fifth year on the commission.

Such conflicts are rare because the port itself--and the harbor commission by extension--employs only 27 workers, a fraction of the nearly 500 who bustle among five ships on the busiest days. And none of the port-employed workers is a member of the largest unions.

The longshore local--by far the largest, with 99 members and 258 so-called “casual” laborers--work under contracts that cover the entire West Coast. They are deployed by stevedoring firms hired by shipping companies. The harbor commission is nowhere in that loop.

“We hear all the time that there’s a conflict of interest,” said Oscar Loya, secretary-treasurer for Local 46 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. “But really, to tell the truth, the commissioners can’t do anything for us.”

The commissioners say that, far from their dual roles being bad, their experience on the docks has made them more effective administrators.

“When you get Joe Blow off the street running for office, he may not know one end of a ship from the other,” port boss Buenger said. “These guys know what the business is all about.”

The longshore commissioners have also helped improve the port’s relationship with its workers, which is important because keeping dockhands happy is good for business.

Port managers say worker productivity has helped transform the Hueneme port from a struggling backwater to a busy little harbor with its own niche in international trade. It is attractive to shippers eager to escape the labor turmoil of the sprawling Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors, the nation’s largest.

With 1/100th the tonnage of those behemoths, the two-wharf Hueneme port has quadrupled the value of imported cargo over the last 10 years as citrus and auto companies joined the banana shippers there.

It was the election of Ramirez, Herrera and Hill that helped seal the symbiotic relationship between the port and its workers by fully opening up the lines of communication, they said.

The 1992 election of Ramirez, in particular, showed that there are practical lessons from a dockhand’s life that translate into port progress, he said.

“Back then, we were concerned that the commissioners were making decisions in a vacuum. So I ran for office on a platform of fixing potholes on the docks,” Ramirez said. “As a forklift driver, those potholes were very important to me. Forklifts don’t have suspension.”

The powers that be didn’t take Ramirez’s election well, he recalled. The first thing then-port director Anthony Taormina said to Ramirez was ask whether he had any other plans besides fixing potholes.

The potholes got fixed, Ramirez said, along with a lot of other things.

About three years ago, Ramirez “made a big stink” when dockworkers were ordered to unload luxury automobiles at night on a dock where the lighting was poor.

“It was a safety issue. They would never have allowed that at L.A. [harbor],” he said. “So I called the director at 10 o’clock at night and invited him to come over and see that the lights were not really functional.”

The lights got fixed, Ramirez said.

It can help, too, to have a blue-collar guy involved in policy negotiations, Ramirez said. He was among a port lobbying group that met with federal envoys in 1993 to ask that the U.S. lift its limit on meat imports from Australia, which arrived through the Port of Hueneme.

“I explained our argument in terms of the worker,” Ramirez said. “How one more ship every two weeks would create X number of jobs and that would mean beans and tortillas on our table.”

The Australians’ meat quota got doubled, Ramirez said.

“I felt I was the voice of the worker,” he said.

The longshore commissioners also say they aggressively spread the word among potential customers--such as Dole and Chiquita--that Hueneme’s work force is the most productive on the West Coast.

In fact, a variety of shippers and port officials in Los Angeles and Long Beach said Hueneme is known for the extraordinary amount of cargo its dockhands move quickly.

“Hueneme has a very good reputation,” said former Port of Long Beach Executive Director Jim McJunkin. “And I should know. They stole most of their customers from here.”

When considering the effect of the longshore commissioners, however, it is important to note not only what they bring to the board collectively, but also their differences.

They do not stand as a unified front on every issue. The commissioners’ differences could be seen recently when Herrera and Ramirez sided with an injured port maintenance worker who asked to be transferred to a less physically demanding job.

Hill voted with Commissioners Mike Plisky, an accountant, and Ray Fosse, a former ship’s captain, to deny the transfer.

They are strikingly different personally, as well.

Herrera, 51, is a prototype longshoreman of another age: He took to the docks at 18, the son of a 33-year longshoreman himself. Some might call it nepotism, he said, but that time-honored practice had its advantages. Herrera remembers a chat he had years ago with a Volvo executive, shortly after the Swedish car company moved its shipments to Hueneme.

“Tell me, are the jobs handed down from father to son?” the man asked. “That’s good,” he said, “because we care about who handles our products.”

A Democrat, Herrera is politically active, having run for state Assembly in 1996. He is considering a campaign for state Senate next year. He also heads a political action committee that supports Latino candidates in Ventura County. For eight years, until he was voted out in 1996, he led the longshore local full time. He now works as a marine clerk, earning about $75,000 a year.

“I’ve had a worm’s-eye view of this port,” Herrera said. “I’ve seen the bad times and the good. So I bring a certain perspective to the board. I understand that the last 10 years have been a renaissance. This is the port’s golden age.”

But his politics have sometimes been a source of friction with the county’s Republican congressman. Gallegly said he has led the fight for port projects, yet Herrera has consistently supported his opponents.

“Jess Herrera has gone out of his way to take me on politically in case after case,” Gallegly said. “I worked for years to get port of entry designation for Hueneme in 1991. Then a couple of months later he gets all his buddies to support my opponent.”

Ramirez, a 55-year-old UC San Diego sociology graduate, began to work the Hueneme docks part time in the 1960s for extra money. In 1986, he qualified for a union card and full-time work. He still drives a forklift, unloading banana ships.

Ramirez was honored by the Oxnard community service group El Concilio del Condado de Ventura in 1997 for his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the poor along with other social causes.

Hill, 75, was a longtime teacher and principal in the Oxnard Elementary School District, before retiring 15 years ago. Despite his age, he promptly staked out the port hiring hall where longshore “casuals”--a type of apprentice--are called when there is too much work for union members.

Now he works about once a week, and because of his longevity earns $25.68 an hour, the same base wage as a union member. That provides a yearly supplement to his retirement pension of from $12,000 to $15,000.

On the job, Hill often drives new cars from ships. But one recent day his task required physical strength as he hoisted 45-pound boxes of bananas from stacks 6 feet high for a quality control inspector. “I’ll probably be sore tomorrow,” said Hill, who rides a bicycle long distances to stay fit.

Hill said his work status is distinct from that of full union members, such as Ramirez and Herrera.

“As a casual longshoreman, you don’t have any rights,” he said. “You do as you’re told, and you don’t ask questions. Although all these guys were casuals once, casuals are basically looked down upon. So I don’t receive any favored treatment because I’m a commissioner.”