By Tom Price

Flying to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress costs money. Yet on the issue of port security, someone has to give the dockworker’s perspective or Congress will hear only the positions of the port employers and government officials.

Thanks to Longshore Division dues, ILWU Port Security Director Mike Mitre provided that voice at the June 9 House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing. Mitre, an International Executive Board member representing Southern California, made the union’s point very clear—port security equals worker and community safety.

Mitre testified that port employers are not following Coast Guard regulations vigorously and highlighted several glaring examples. These include the lack of identification of truck drivers entering the terminal, lack of identification of hazardous cargo, lack of cargo documentation, and the lack of a basic emergency response plan and evacuation procedures.

Drivers are the largest single group of workers on the docks, yet no one inspects cab-over sleepers, which frequently contain passengers who are then driven all over the docks. Mitre stressed the need for checking trucker identification as well.

“At some facilities, no one checks to see that the drivers are who they say they are,” Mitre said. “No one checks to ensure that the photograph on the license matches the driver of the vehicle.”

Mitre also pointed out the lack of proper container seal inspection, and told the committee, “Since Sept. 11 many facility operators have discontinued their past practice of checking these seals.”

Mitre used the April 28 container explosion at the Port of Los Angeles’ TraPac terminal as an example of how everything can go wrong. He laid out how an un-inspected container with no inventory and no HazMat placards blew up on the dock just prior to being loaded with other hazardous materials aboard ship. The container’s manifest only listed its contents as “Freight All Kinds” (FAK), a vagueness not allowed on containers coming from other countries.

“The container arrived at the facility with a non-standard seal and ambiguous paperwork,” Mitre testified. “The in-gate automated system, which has replaced the gate clerk, reported to remotely located personnel that the container had arrived…The clerk never saw the container.”

After the accident, it became apparent no evacuation plans were in place, and no one seemed to be in command.

Gunmen entered the Israeli Port of Ashod six weeks earlier resulting in the death of ten dockers, Mitre said. They entered from the landward side.

Mitre told the House subcommittee that all incoming containers need to be inspected, but the way production is set up at many terminals clerks working in remote areas of the port can’t visually inspect containers. The containers often arrive with vague or nonexistent paperwork, he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard agrees with the need for landward inspections.

“Empties should be checked as they cross the threshold of a facility, and seals should be checked,” USCG director of port security Rear Adm. Larry Hereth told the Journal of Commerce.

But, as Mitre pointed out, there are problems in making sure that happens.

“The Coast Guard is a waterside and vessel enforcement specialist,” Mitre told the committee. “They are not a ‘landside’ or ‘terminal’ enforcer of regulations.”

Port authorities complained of the high costs of inspections. Noel Cunningham, Director of Operations and Emergency Management for the Port of Los Angeles, testified that federal funding for security is inadequate.

Hereth offered another opinion “[The ports] own the infrastructure, they profit from the infrastructure and they probably deserve to share a responsibility of the costs,” Hereth said.

Mitre told the committee the Coast Guard had to be funded and empowered to enforce inspection requirements. FAK designations had to be banned and container inventories provided 24 hours in advance. Container seals must be inspected and empties must be checked. Truckers must be identified and their trucks inspected. Security training must be provided, and emergency plans must be known to all on the docks.

Congresswoman Juanita Millen-der-McDonald, a California Democrat whose district includes a slice of the Port of Los Angeles, drafted a bill earlier this year that would put $800 million in federal funds into port security in each of the next five years. The bill, HB 3712, has the support of the ILWU and the American Assn. of Port Authorities.

“We can have an effect on what happens in these ports,” Mitre said. “We can have a voice, we can take part in a decision that will control our own destiny and protect ourselves and the community where we live and work.”