Firm bears brunt of anger at dock.

Federal action forcing longshoremen to go back to work last week at local ports did little to relieve the tension between union and management--in fact it has sparked a blame game targeted mostly at one company that has taken on the role of the heavy in the maritime drama being played out.

Terminal operator Stevedoring Services of America Inc. is accused by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union of being the major force behind the hard line taken by the Pacific Maritime Association in labor negotiations that ended in a lockout of port workers and pushed President Bush to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act.

Labor organizers say SSA is stalling contract negotiations and using its muscle to ensure a stalemate in hopes of weakening and ultimately busting the union. Its reputation in the industry as being the biggest promoter of technology at the ports--a major sticking point in negotiations--has enraged members of the ILWU.

"You can ask any longshore worker anywhere in the world what's the worst company to work for and they will unanimously say SSA," said Steve Stallone, the ILWU spokesman. "They have been the worst company in these negotiations. They have been the most hard-lined and they have made coming to a settlement impossible."

Officials of other terminal operations and shipping companies say that SSA is being unfairly targeted.

SSA officials refused to discuss the labor unrest and their role in the negotiations on the record, fearing union retaliation in the wake of the forced reopening of the ports. But company officials and other terminal operators acknowledge SSA's aggressive push for technology. They said the company is attempting to be more efficient, but deny that SSA is trying to break up the union.

Target of pickets

The Seattle-based company is the West Coast's largest terminal operator with facilities in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle, Oakland, Portland and San Diego, and has been a frequent target of pickets during the past month. It has also been a major target of work "slowdowns" by the union - a tactic that the LLWU denies but that the PMA said had led to the lockout on Sept. 29.

Unlike other terminal operators that also own ship lines, SSA relies on handling cargo at the docks. Therefore, it is more concerned with cost efficiency and would especially benefit from the proposed moves towards technology.

"The big difference between SSA and other terminals is that SSA makes all of its money inside the terminal fence," said Larry Nye, vice president of Long Beach-based Moffatt & Nichol Engineers, which has been designing SSA's terminal gate operations for three decades. "They don't have any ships. SSA has a lower tolerance for the cost associated with not being able to get the benefit of technology."

Retailers and manufacturers pay ship lines $1,500 to $2,000 for each container they transport from Asia to the West Coast. Of that amount, terminals get $200 to $250 to move each container through the port and onto a truck or train.

ILWU labor comprises only 1 percent of overall operating costs for a ship line, but 75 to 90 percent for a terminal.

"(SSA) has fewer dollars to work with," said Nye. "A ship company is not dependent on a terminal for its survival?'

Industry officials said the SSA has been applying the most pressure to the PMA, the bargaining arm of ship companies and terminal operators, to stick to its guns in the most contentious issue of the negotiations -- computerized work assignment and container tracking systems in the ports.

That has irked union members.

"If you're a longshoreman and someone mentions SSA, they blow a gasket," said Peter Olney, associate director of the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment. "The union absolutely sees the SSA as an antiunion hawk."

SSA terminals have been hardest hit by job actions, according to PMA records, which showed that for the week of Sept. 23, four of the five SSA operations at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach started between one and two hours late, with cranes at two terminals 30 percent slower than normal. Additionally, production at the four Port of Seattle berths run by SSA was down 50 to 60 percent.

Diversllicalion

SSA formed in 1949 as a Bellingham, Wash.-based stevedore company that hired labor to load and unload steel, lumber and paper from the holding area beneath the ship deck. Most of SSA's work was exporting forest products.

Through massive expansion, most of which occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, SSA diversified into terminal operations and entered into partnerships with railroad lines to load and unload cargo.

During that time, it gained a strong regional presence by acquiring Crescent Wharf and Warehouse at the Port of Los Angeles and taking over the Pacific Container Terminal building at the Port of Long Beach after the previous tenant was forced out for falling behind in lease payments.

SSA went international when it began a terminal and rail operation in Taiwan in 1992. Although that operation no longer exists, the company has been running a terminal on the Panama Canal since 1994. It was one of 150 port and rail operations handled by 10,000 employees (including ILWU workers) worldwide.

The current impasse over technology centers on the 300 to 500 clerical positions that would be eliminated under the PMA proposal (even though the PMA has guaranteed each clerk would be retrained for other work and that all existing dockworkers would have a job until retirement). But reduction in work for maritime clerks at SSA terminals actually began early last year.

The company revised its cargo receiving and delivering process to eliminate "interchange reports" issued to truck drivers by so-called "tear-off men' who are maritime clerks at the gate truck lanes.

As trucks arrive at a gate, a union clerk punches in license plate and container numbers so that load planners will know which trucks have anived and where their containers should be picked up or dropped off.

Most terminal track lanes also have union tear-off men who receive a printout of the report, make sure the information is correct and the container's condition has been inspected before then handing the sheet of paper to the driver.

But last year the SSA told the union it did not want containers inspected and that drivers would memorize their pickup and drop off locations listed on a screen at the gate - thereby eliminating the task handled by the additional clerk.

"Obviously, the ILWU is not going to like that," said Nye. "They just want to employ as many people as possible?"

SSA is also consolidating its facilities at Long Beach next year, eliminating their terminal operation in L.A., although it will keep its stevedoring facility here.

As ships were left idling off the coast during the port lockdown, some shippers were beginning to question the PMA's hard-line stance against the union, industry officials said. SSA was not one of them, they added.

"The ILWU is attempting to isolate the SSA in order to create a tangible villain," said John Pachtner, a PMA consultant. "The PMA and all its members stand united on all these issues and there is no one villain out there. Demonizing is a familiar tactic but it is not going to get us back to the bargaining table with the kind of atmosphere that is going to get us a new contract."