Longshoremen

More ships are coming to the port of Baltimore these days, cargo levels are increasing, and the port's even grabbing some business from competitors such as Norfolk, Va., and Philadelphia.But at the International Longshoremen's Association hiring hall in Highlandtown, such promising signs are barely noticeable.Every day before 7 a.m., several hundred longshoremen arrive at the hall, lining up along a yellow cinder-block wall, in front of large letters that designate their seniority. On a typical day, 30 will be called for jobs -- some for only two and three hours -- that they once did every day.While the longshoremen hope that the port's recent upswing will bring more steady work, they're really counting on something far more certain.

When career criminals have access to U.S. ports but law-abiding airline passengers must let strangers grope them to board a plane, something smells. Even worse, no one seems to care at a time Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano described in congressional testimony last week as the most dangerous since Sept. 11. Van Smith at the City Paper ran court records of the 918 members of the International Longshoremen's Association Local 333 and found that about one-quarter of union members have been convicted of a crime in Maryland.

With difficult contract negotiations ahead in 1996, cargo handlers at the Port of Baltimore have elected a veteran dockworker and former union leader to head the port's largest longshoremen's local.By a 100-vote margin, members of Local 333 of the International Longshoremen's Association chose Bill Schonowski in all-day election Wednesday.Mr. Schonowski, who has worked as a longshoreman for nearly 40 years, ousted Matty Capp, a less-experienced union leader who rose to the $70,000-a-year president's post nearly two years ago by filling the unexpired term of Ed Berke.

A third-generation dockworker from Baltimore was elected president of the International Longshoremen's Association yesterday - the largest union of port workers in North America. Richard P. Hughes Jr., who had been executive vice president of the New York-based union since 2005, replaces John Bowers, who held the post for two decades. The 73-year-old Hughes - the first Longshoreman from Baltimore to hold the top post - was selected in a voice vote at the ILA's quadrennial convention in Florida.

The largest shipping line in the port of Baltimore has threatened to abandon plans for a new cargo hub in the city and begin negotiations with competing ports, blaming local Longshoremen for being "noncompetitive." The Scandinavian shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines, which wants to consolidate much of its East Coast cargo in Baltimore, said it can't commit to expanding here if the union of cargo handlers doesn't agree to more flexible work hours and job duties. The largest local of the Longshoremen's union has refused, rejecting a contract change offered by the company this month.

Once again, longshoremen clerks' leader Richard P. Hughes Jr. has precipitated a strike at Baltimore's port. This one poses enormous dangers for the regional and Maryland economies -- and for the majority of longshoremen in other union locals that disagree with Mr. Hughes' action.State officials called Mr. Hughes' decision a pre-meditated move to win back for his clerks local No. 953 the jobs lost in the last round of talks. The fact that this could prompt a diversion of cargo to other ports, and the loss of countless jobs for dockworkers here, doesn't seem to have entered into his equation.

Negotiators for labor and management in the port of Baltimore talked into the night yesterday in an attempt to reach a contract agreement with the last of five longshoremen's locals.A tentative, four-year agreement with four of the five port locals was reached Friday morning, reducing the threat of a strike, but negotiations with Local 953 of the International Longshoremen's Association, representing dock clerks and checkers, continued Friday night and resumed yesterday at 3 p.m."We're negotiating and we're hopeful," Richard P. Hughes Jr., leader of Local 953, said last night during talks at the Linthicum Heights headquarters of the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots.

A federal lawsuit charging a Baltimore stevedoring company with race discrimination has been dropped for lack of evidence, but some black longshoremen claimed yesterday that favoritism continues to plague the port.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said yesterday that it gave up on the lawsuit it had filed last year, alleging that the Ceres Corp. was giving less work to three gangs of black longshoremen than to gangs made up predominantly of white workers.Longshoremen, who move cargo on and off ships, are organized into "gangs" of 17 workers each.

Seven months into a four-year contract, longshoremen at the Port of Baltimore are accusing management of giving preferential treatment to some work gangs.Officials of International Longshoremen's Association Local 333 took their grievance this week to a federal arbitrator. They allege that three stevedoring companies are not keeping their promise in the contract to make "every effort" to give longshoremen enough hours to receive Guaranteed Annual Income benefits.Under the contract adopted by the locals in December, each longshoreman must work at least 200 hours in two of the last three years in order to receive the GAI money.

WASHINGTON - President Bush intervened yesterday in the 11-day shutdown of 29 West Coast ports, successfully seeking a court order to halt the employers' lockout of 10,500 longshoremen because the operation of the ports is "vital to our economy and to our military." Judge William Alsup of U.S. District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary injunction last night ordering longshoremen to report to work immediately. In seeking to suspend the shutdown for 80 days, Bush became the first president to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act's emergency provisions since President Nixon sought to stop a longshoremen's strike in 1971.

Albert G. Kowalewski, a retired president of a stevedores' union, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease Dec. 12 at Hammonds Lane Nursing Home. The Brooklyn resident was 77. Born in Baltimore and raised in Fells Point, he attended St. Casimir's parochial school. He served in the Army in Japan, and in the 1950s re-entered military service during the Korean War. While stationed at Fort Meade, he met his future wife, the former Evelyn Bartlett. He helped unload freight cars at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad warehouse -- now part of the Camden Yards stadium complex -- before joining the International Longshoremen's Association as a carpenter, securing heavy cargo on ships leaving the port of Baltimore.

Theresa Harden can still drive tractors all day, but at 61 years old, the longshoreman has a tough time crawling on her hands and knees in the belly of a cargo ship, a task that port of Baltimore workers do to help secure freight. "I can't do it," she said recently. For many years, Harden and other workers who were older, weaker or battered from years on the job relied on their seniority at Local 333 of the International Longshoremen's Association. Work rules allowed them a day's pay for jobs they could comfortably do. But many workers say such rules have been eroded in the nearly 18 months since their New York-based union stepped into local affairs, pointing to financial and other irregularities.

A steady line of cars pulled through the gate just before 1 p.m. yesterday. Longshoremen, many already wearing their orange safety vests, flashed their badges to guards and made their way over to the berth at Seagirt Marine Terminal where the MSC Zurich had docked. Many of them have made this same trek for years, even decades. But one thing was different yesterday. The work they were used to doing in relative anonymity was suddenly news. The company they work for, the British-owned cargo handling company Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., or P&O, is being bought by another stevedoring firm owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

The John Deere 9660 STS combine is a two-story, green behemoth that costs twice as much as the average house in Baltimore and seems almost big enough to live in. With it, farmers can thresh at least 80 acres of grain in a day. But driving a combine into the belly of a cargo ship is like driving a rowhouse down the ramp of a parking garage. "They asked me to do it last week, but I refused because I didn't want to assume I knew how to do it," said Otis Smithson, a port of Baltimore longshoreman for about eight months.

WASHINGTON - President Bush intervened yesterday in the 11-day shutdown of 29 West Coast ports, successfully seeking a court order to halt the employers' lockout of 10,500 longshoremen because the operation of the ports is "vital to our economy and to our military." Judge William Alsup of U.S. District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary injunction last night ordering longshoremen to report to work immediately. In seeking to suspend the shutdown for 80 days, Bush became the first president to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act's emergency provisions since President Nixon sought to stop a longshoremen's strike in 1971.

CHANGE IS difficult, especially when it affects the way you do your job. That helps explain why members of International Longshoremen's Association Local 333 twice rejected new work rules that could mean a big increase in shipping at the port of Baltimore. Why make further concessions, many of them asked. Enough is enough. But not when those work changes could lead to a dramatic jump in the number of ships docking at Baltimore. Wallenius Wilhelmsen, the world's largest maritime carrier of cars, farm equipment and other roll-on/roll-off cargo, wants to make Baltimore its regional hub. The state wants to spend tens of millions of dollars on new facilities at a 150-acre port site.

When career criminals have access to U.S. ports but law-abiding airline passengers must let strangers grope them to board a plane, something smells. Even worse, no one seems to care at a time Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano described in congressional testimony last week as the most dangerous since Sept. 11. Van Smith at the City Paper ran court records of the 918 members of the International Longshoremen's Association Local 333 and found that about one-quarter of union members have been convicted of a crime in Maryland.

Theresa Harden can still drive tractors all day, but at 61 years old, the longshoreman has a tough time crawling on her hands and knees in the belly of a cargo ship, a task that port of Baltimore workers do to help secure freight. "I can't do it," she said recently. For many years, Harden and other workers who were older, weaker or battered from years on the job relied on their seniority at Local 333 of the International Longshoremen's Association. Work rules allowed them a day's pay for jobs they could comfortably do. But many workers say such rules have been eroded in the nearly 18 months since their New York-based union stepped into local affairs, pointing to financial and other irregularities.

Local Longshoremen voted 235-189 yesterday against work rules concessions that would have all but cemented plans for the port of Baltimore's largest shipping line to establish a new cargo hub in the city. Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines, the world's largest automobile carrier, previously threatened to begin negotiations with other ports unless the contract was approved. Without the labor concessions, the company has said, Baltimore is not competitive with other East Coast ports. Local 333 of the International Longshoremen's Association had rejected a similar contract addendum in a 357-57 vote April 10. Union members said they don't expect another vote on the issue.

The pigeons fly around inside at 900 Oldham St. Old gum and puddles of stale soda stick to your shoes, and when the hall fills up with people, a milky blanket of cigarette smoke clings to the ceiling. There's only one place in Baltimore that Tim Sansone would rather be: on the waterfront, making money. Sansone is a Longshoreman. He has 18 years of seniority -- a baby on the piers of the Patapsco River -- so if he wants to work he has to tool about the hiring hall of the International Longshoremen's Association, talking shop, smoking his cigarettes and waiting for the dispatchers to post the next job. "You sit in here all day sometimes, from 6 in the morning until midnight, and then only get four hours of work.