Longshoremen Are Not Your Father’s Dockworkers

On my way down to the Port of Los Angeles on Tuesday, I couldn’t help but consider the irony.

After decades of technological advancement, post-industrial reinvention and the miracle of globalization, the U.S. economy can apparently still be brought to its knees by one of organized labor’s museum pieces--the longshoreman.

Container ships are lined up off the western United States with nowhere to go, just sitting out there with our new sneakers and sports cars. Railroad and trucking company employees who normally haul that stuff across the country are twiddling their thumbs. And retailers are beginning to fear the unimaginable--the cancellation of Christmas.

All this because a mere 10,500 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union were locked out of the West Coast’s 29 ports Friday in a contract dispute with their boss--the Pacific Maritime Assn. PMA locked the doors after claiming the dockworkers were in a slowdown.

These things can be quite contentious, as you know, and in fact a federal mediation session broke down Tuesday in Oakland when one side showed up packing heat.

You’re thinking union, right?

Guess again. Management brought armed guards.

It used to be much easier to figure out who the thugs were.

I don’t know about you, but I kind of like the idea that a global economy designed by people who make millions of dollars in bonuses can be torpedoed by a bunch of throwbacks who work the waterfront.

These are not, however, the longshoremen you saw in black-and-white movies. If you’ve been following the news, you know they can make between $80,000 and $150,000 a year with overtime.

So who are they? And how could they possibly have any complaints about a deal that pays them so handsomely for loading and unloading ships?

Those are the questions that brought me down to the ILWU Local 13 office in Wilmington, where I met two guys who do not fit the image I had in mind.

They’re both college graduates, and they were both smart enough to know they couldn’t beat the deal down on the docks.

Michael Ponce, 40, got an engineering degree from USC. He owned a construction business, but worked the docks with four of his five brothers when business was slow, and made a full-time switch seven years ago. He’s now a lasher, which means he goes up on the ships and releases the ties that bind the containers.

Ralph Espino, 49, got a history degree from UCLA. He owned a liquor store for a while, but wanted a change 18 years ago and followed his father to the waterfront. Espino operates a crane that loads cargo onto railroad cars.

Ponce said that he’s never made $100,000 a year, and that anyone other than a foreman who makes between $60,000 and $80,000 is putting in a ton of overtime.

“The amount of money we earn certainly makes us among the highest paid blue-collar workers in the United States,” Espino adds, but he says the work is more technical than it used to be. “About 75% of the jobs require a skill, and it can be a dangerous job, too.”

“Second only to mining,” says Ponce.

But money isn’t the issue. Their main concern is one that’s as old as the hills in organized labor disputes: that mechanization will eventually knock them off the gravy train.

“This is all a precursor to their elimination of us,” Ponce said of the lockout by PMA.

He’s probably right, but American businesses are not charities. If they can dump employees and jump profits at the same time, nothing will stand in their way.

Wouldn’t you guys have done the same when you ran your businesses? I asked.

They both said no, which may be why they’re now dockworkers.

All they’re asking, they said, is that they be considered for new jobs created by new technology, and that those jobs be represented by the union.

“It’s corporate greed in my opinion,” Ponce said of his employer in particular and American business in general. “They make a ton of money and they want more, and they know they can get it if they get rid of us and use more casual laborers who get no benefits and less pay.”

Working the docks and looking at the endless tide of products that come and go in the new economy, Espino, the history major, often finds himself wondering if it makes any sense.

He sees scrap metal passing through the docks on its way to Japan, where factory workers turn it into steel, and he sees it come back as the girding we use to erect buildings.

What jobs did we give away in that exchange, he wonders, and what jobs did we get in return?

With the sneakers and stereo equipment he loads onto railroad cars, what’s the better job for an American: making those products, or ringing them up at the Target checkout counter?

“I’m almost getting to be an isolationist at this point,” Espino said.

Dozens of dockworkers walked picket lines as I drove past the gates of the port, and two thoughts occurred as I got onto the Harbor Freeway and took in a broad view of the harbor.

It certainly is a society of haves and have-nots, with some people getting paid millions to look pretty. But even among commoners, there’s a wide disparity as well, and it’s hard to work up much sympathy for those grossing nearly six figures to unload boxes.

What about teachers, gardeners and housekeepers who have to work two jobs to get by? Where’s their piece of the new economy?

As soon as this lockout is settled, I suggest they all race down to the waterfront.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.