Port Workers Return to Work After Day of Protest

Bay Area longshore workers joined anti-war activists at Justin Herman Plaza
in San Francisco yesterday, using the traditional May Day celebration
of social and economic advancements made by the international labor movement,
to protest the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Photos by John Han

By Jeff Shuttleworth and Maya Strausberg

May 2, 2008

Bay Area longshore workers were back to yesterday evening following a May-Day protest of the United States’ occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that included walking out on the day shift yesterday.

Port of Oakland spokeswoman Marilyn Sandifur said workers there had returned for the next shift that began at 5 p.m.

The absence of longshore workers had a relatively minimal impact at the port, according to Sandifur.

“There was insufficient labor to conduct normal cargo operations, but it was an unusually light day today,” she said.

Sandifur said only one ship was scheduled to come into the port yesterday. On a normal day, three to five ships come in and on busy days as many as seven ships come to Oakland, she said.

Sandifur speculated that because the walkout by 25,000 dockworkers belonging to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union throughout the West Coast was announced several months ago and was highly publicized, companies may have adjusted their shipping schedules.

She said a large number of ships sailed late Wednesday or early Thursday day before the walkout started.

Brandon Taylor, the logistics operations manager for GSC Logistics, a warehousing, distribution and transportation company at the Port of Oakland, said, “We didn’t experience too much disruption,” in part because his company planned ahead and shipped containers out of the port earlier this week.

Taylor said, “This is a slow time of the year, so this was a good time for them (the longshore workers) to try to pull this off.”

Taylor said that if a similar job action were to occur in September or October, which are busier months, it could be “devastating to the economy” nationally.

Sandifur said John Martin & Associates, an economic consulting firm based in Pennsylvania, has calculated that $1.2 trillion in business activity is generated through the West Coast’s ports, which represents 10 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Sandifur said that although shipping operations at the port weren’t heavily impacted by the job action, the action had a ripple effect because truckers weren’t allowed to drop off or pick up materials at the port.

She said rail terminals at the port were open and operating but activity was lighter than normal because there wasn’t marine terminal activity.

Taylor said that it could take just a day or two for longshore workers to get marine terminal operations back to normal.