I let my negotiator speak for me. It can persuasively talk to 6 longshoremen at a time.
Posted on 10/15/2021 4:33:11 PM PDT by grundle
LONG BEACH, California — Crane operators who belong to a powerful union and earn up to $250,000 a year transferring containers from ships to trucks are worsening the supply chain crisis that threatens Christmas by goofing off on the job, frustrated truckers told the Washington Examiner.
The finger-pointing at the busy Los Angeles County ports comes as scores of container ships are anchored off the California coast, waiting in some cases for weeks to unload their freight. The Biden administration has scrambled to get shipping executives, port officials, and labor to tackle the problem. While the reasons for the burgeoning backlog are complex, truck drivers say not everyone seems to be working together.
“In 15 years of doing this job, I’ve never seen them work slower,” said Antonio, who has spent hours waiting at Los Angeles County ports for cargo to be loaded. “The crane operators take their time, like three to four hours to get just one container. You can’t say anything to them, or they will just go [help] someone else.”
The Washington Examiner spoke to six truck drivers near the Long Beach/Terminal Island entry route, and each described crane operators as lazy, prone to long lunches, and quick to retaliate against complaints. The allegations were backed up by a labor consultant who has worked on the waterfront for 40 years. None of the truckers interviewed for this story wanted to provide a last name because they fear reprisals at the ports.
The crane operators are part of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which also represents longshoremen. Veteran operators who have a set schedule make approximately $250,000 a year, while others who receive daily work assignments make $200,000, said labor consultant Jim Tessier, who represents longshoremen in disputes against the union.
“What you are talking about is perfectly described behavior,” Tessier said of the crane operators. “This is all a reflection of the management they have down there, the inmates run the asylum. The managers are all afraid to say anything because the operators are so powerful they get management fired if they don’t like them.”
Most truckers are independent contractors who are paid per container delivery and make a fraction of a crane operator's salary. They only arrive at the docks after receiving notification that the cargo is ready for pickup. Waiting hours for shipping containers to be loaded onto their trucks is frustrating, and those who have complained were swiftly dealt with, they say.
“They’ll go get the police and kick you out and tell you to leave,” said trucker Chris. “Then, you get banned from coming back in there.”
Or sometimes, the crane operator will mete out punishment by skipping the trucker and working on someone else, exacerbating the wait.
While three-hour waits are common, some truckers have been at the port for days.
“They will wait there all day and then come back the next day,” Chris said. “I know someone who kept coming back, and eventually, [the terminal] will charge you a storage fee if you don’t get the container out of there.”
Truckers unlucky enough to be waiting around lunchtime will watch as the entire crane crew stops work, instead of staggering their hours.
“They leave for two hours, and you are stuck with no one there,” trucker Brian said.
The ILWU did not respond to two requests for comment.
As of Wednesday, 59 ships were at a berth unloading cargo at one of the three Los Angeles ports. Another 88 are anchored off the coast stretching along Orange County and around Catalina Island, according to the Marine Exchange, which coordinates the ship traffic. The wait time to come into port can be weeks, including one ship that has been in a holding pattern miles offshore since Sept. 9.
The backlog, stretching 20 miles along the coast, has forced many large retailers to circumvent the bottleneck and charter their own ships so products can be on shelves before the Christmas shopping season. Reuters reported that incoming cargo is up 30%, which is also part of the problem.
A secondary issue leading to the crunch is a lack of available chassis at the ports to place the cargo containers onto before they're hauled away by the truckers. While the truckers say they are making the same number of trips as previous years, for some reason, chassis are in short supply for those who don't own one, and they wait for returns to come in.
In an effort to clear the logjam, President Joe Biden negotiated a 24-hour port operation . One of Long Beach’s terminals has already been working around the clock. The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach account for roughly 40% of all U.S. imports.
But the round-the-clock schedule probably won’t matter much because the crane operators work slower at night, said a trucker identified as Oscar.
“Compared to all the other years, they are definitely [working] slower now. I wait at least three hours every single day,” he said. Oscar makes two trips to the ports a day to pick up shipping containers full of electronics, which are dropped off in the greater Los Angeles area — a 10-hour process.
Oscar said each terminal has two massive cranes to load cargo and he’s never seen both of them operating at once. A survey of two dozen cranes in Long Beach by the Washington Examiner found at least half of them nonoperational.
However, one terminal in Long Beach has started using automated cranes, and truckers rejoice when they are summoned to pick up cargo there. It is efficient and quick.
“They have to hire extra men to work the cranes and don’t want to do it,” Tessier said. “There are a lot of things [terminal operators] could do but don’t do because it costs extra money. Shows how concerned they are about their customers.”
Yeah, sure.
It’s those lazy longshoremen that’s the problem. Tell ‘em that to their face.
I thought homos like cranes. You would think Buttjig would be over there directing traffic instead of playing hide and seek with his ‘baby’.
Met a skycrapper crame operator while trout fishing one time. Super nice guy.
Wondered when this story about lazy assed UNION employees would come out.
The “solution” to them working 24/7 is freaking laughable. They won’t do it. They’ll work, but at their own pace. “Safely”, I’m sure they’ll call it.
I let my negotiator speak for me. It can persuasively talk to 6 longshoremen at a time.
American farmers produce plenty of beef, lamb and honey and it’s far better quality than imported stuff. I would bet that most imported honey is fake or adulterated with high fructose corn syrup just like imported olive oil is cut with cheap seed oils.
My experience at Hampton Roads. Most were 50 lbs overweight, Smoked Malboro Red like they were free. Moved just a little faster than a turtle. Looked like a cardiac explosion in the making. Just sayin
So after the second days of that, we decided we would continue driving our vehicles and guns on the ship anyway even after the longshoreman had stopped working. There was a bit of a physical altercation between the longshoreman and some of my Marines, but they ended up backing down, and we drove our own equipment onto the ship until it was all loaded in one night.
Such peckerheads.
“is it the State and EPA restricting which trucks are new enough to service the ports”
How I understand it from what I heard on War Room, it’s the state of CA, and maybe Gavin Newsome in particular. A few years ago he made some decree having to do with diesel trucks.
When PDJT was in, he put a stop to the CA rules. Now that the RATs are back in power, they’ve reverted back to the old rules.
I may be wrong, but that was my take.
If the loss of tsoschke is going to affect your Christmas, perhaps you need to re-evaluate what Christmas is all about!
Hint: It’s NOT the gifts!
Interesting article with a lot of details on west coast port operations—the DC clowns have absolutely no clue what they are dealing with:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/heres-truth-behind-247-port-operations-pledge
So you pistol-whip the last one, seeing as that has a 5 round cylinder?
Man, false bravado is so, “brave”.
Just added a whole other group of people who need to be hanged when this is all over with some day.
Yes but the ships from the Pacific have to go through the Panama Canal (and pay China $200,000+ per ship) to get to the Gulf or Atlantic ports. Amazon, Walmart, and others already made arangements to do this when they realized what the California emissions changes were going to do to the West Coast ports.
My father has a book on the construction of Norris Dam, a TVA dam in east Tennessee. The book gives the pay of various construction workers. I remember that the crane operators were the highest paid.
Then use Seattle and Tacoma ports and Oregon!!!
If they did (beef and lamb), we wouldn't be importing it from South America (mainly for pet food), but we don't produce enough beef and lamb so we import it from Australia and New Zealand. Those are sought after from industrial producers (fast food, institutional suppliers, etc.)
You're a little off the mark on honey. It's manifested as coming from Vietnam, but when tested (constantly) it's from China, and destroyed upon arrival.
So, what did he do? It takes a rare type of guy (or... possibly a gal, although I've never met one) to spend his working life 300 feet above a pier, looking down.
It's not the kind of job you quit to become a real estate agent.
For that matter, it's not the job site I'd visit for their annual salary for a 30 second visit.
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