Judge Delays Ruling on Dockworker Pact

A federal judge Monday postponed a decision whether to approve a consent decree that could force the dockworkers union in the county’s ports to induct hundreds of minorities who flunked an entrance exam that has been deemed discriminatory.

U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian delayed his ruling after hearing arguments in a case brought in February by the federal Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission against the Pacific Maritime Assn. and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

EEOC attorneys contend that the union and the maritime association, which represents shipping companies, used a hiring test for apprentice dockworkers that was biased against Asians, Hispanics and African Americans.

Pacific Maritime and the ILWU have signed a consent decree to scrap the basic skills test, allow hundreds of minority applicants to reapply for dock work, and pay $2.75 million in damages to those minorities who finally qualify as apprentices. A federal judge must approve the agreement.

A group of apprentice dockworkers has asked Tevrizian to let them intervene as plaintiffs in the lawsuit so they can challenge the consent decree. They say that many of those who passed the test, including many minorities, now stand to lose their seniority toward union membership if the decree is approved.

They fear that people who flunked the test, some of them more than once, will be advanced ahead of them in the long line of apprentices who are trying to earn enough hours for ILWU membership.

There are more than 5,000 registered members of the ILWU at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. There are about 3,500 nonunion apprentices, or so called casual dockworkers, who generally take the work that goes unfilled each day by union members.