by Tom Price

More than four and a half years after the attacks of 9-11, the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) announced April 25 that port workers’ names will be vetted against secret lists held by the DHS Terrorist Screening Center and their immigration status will be checked by the DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Called the Transportation Port Worker Interim Screening Program, this measure is a prelude to the more exhaustive Transport Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) that DHS says it plans to introduce sometime in the future.

Of the 400,000 people subjected to interim screening, the majority will not be traditional longshore workers and marine clerks. They will be the guards and watchmen, ferry and tug boat crew, portside warehouse people and others who have long-term access to the port. The law doesn’t require the submission of the information, but only those who apply and pass screening will be allowed onto the docks to work.

The ILWU Longshore Division has decided to provide the DHS with names and dates of birth of its members, but the Division doesn’t have the Social Security numbers and the alien registry numbers the DHS also requested. A waiver process for those who don’t pass the pre-screening will soon be in place for those who challenge the DHS findings, but DHS has so far released few details. What is known is that workers who fail the interim screening can ask for a review, but that will be given by the same agencies that turned them down in the first place.

When TWIC, the next phase of security screening is imposed sometime in the future, workers will be required to pass a rigorous security background check to work at the port. ILWU Legislative Director Lindsay McLaughlin has lobbied Congress to clarify the law and provide a more neutral appeals process.

“Criminal background checks will look seven years into the past for serious crimes,” McLaughlin said. “But some crimes have no permanent limit, such as murder, espionage, treason, sedition or a felony involving transportation security incident.

The TWIC card will contain biometric data, such as fingerprints, and cost each worker about $139. The government projects that eventually as many as 850,000 transportation workers will come under the rule. Under TWIC, workers will be able to appeal a denial of a security clearance to an administrative law judge (see story page 4).

Interim screening will exempt port truckers and those working less than 90 days at the port, Mc Laughlin said. They will most likely be included when TWIC is passed. Many experts consider that exemption a serious flaw. Regular port workers whose families and careers are at or near the port have the most to lose from terrorism, and the temporary workers are often here today and gone tomorrow.

Warehouse Local 26 represents warehouse workers on the docks whose jobs include bunkering ships and processing scrap metal and other cargo prior to it being loaded. The local also represents about 420 guards at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. They are already required to clear a background check by the State of California.

“When it comes to real port security, the bottom line is the collective awareness of the people who work there,” said Luisa Gratz, president of Local 26. “You can have all the technology, but humans must operate that technology. They recognize data as flawed, or maybe incomplete or suspicious. ILWU members know the dock like the back of their hands. And humans should inspect containers. Politicians should ask our members about port security, not some think tank.”

Members of the Inlandboatmen’s Union, the Marine Division of the ILWU, are usually required to have Merchant Mariner Documents (MMDs), according to IBU Puget Sound BA Stuart Downer. They will probably need a TWIC card in the future.

“We started living the post-9-11 regulations before 9-11,” Downer said. “When you apply for a MMD you have to give your Social Security number and answer all the questions about any criminal activities. They run a full FBI background check.”

Workers on the water side of the docks have experienced the down side of the document process, according to IBU President Alan Cote´.

“We have already lived the life of being vetted, probed and tested,” Cote´ said. “Unlike 30 years ago, a sailor today would lose his document if he got a second DUI and not be able to work.”

Non-union companies are speaking up loudly against this system, Cote´ said. “They rely more on un-documented, casual labor, generally under paid, who work long hours and don’t have the advantage of a union contract,” Cote´ said. “They have a lot of turnover. They don’t know how they’re going to staff certain non-union ferries.”

Gary Harvey, president of chemical processing packaging Local 20, works on the docks in Wilmington, right next to aviation fuel tanker loading facilities. His members submitted their names to DHS.

“As long as they’re using it for what they’re using it for, I don’t really see it affecting anyone down here,” Harvey said. Harvey and others have complained to the Coast Guard and the port about the lax security on the fuel-loading docks. So far nothing has been done.

Security officers’ Local 28, whose members cover security at the Ports of Portland and Tacoma, has not yet been informed of the screening by DHS, according to Secretary-Treasurer Dan Hardisty.

“We have already gone through background checks by the state government, so this is not yet an issue for the members,” he said. “But we probably will have to go through the TWIC process.”

Many warehouse Local 6 workers are employed in waterfront facilities at the various ports around the San Francisco Bay and may be affected by the screening too, according to its Secretary-Treasurer Fred Pecker. But the Coast Guard has yet to say which ones.

“We don’t really know how it’s going to affect our members, but some of our members could lose their jobs because of immigration status or prior activities that they’ve already paid their debts to society for,” Pecker said. “I think they’re scapegoating the workforce. In particular, they’re scapegoating the highly organized sector of the workforce.”

Local 6 members who may be affected work a liquid bulk terminal and a general warehouse in San Francisco, a cotton warehouse in Oakland, a Con-Agra flour factory on the Alameda Estuary and a sugar factory in Crockett. In Richmond they handle liquid bulk, cement, and bulk oils. In Antioch they handle gypsum wallboard. In Stockton they handle scrap metal, ammonia and liquid sugar, and they work at a general warehouse and perform maintenance work on the port.

Screened workers with IDs will have an advantage in getting jobs on the docks, Sacramento warehouse Local 17 Dispatcher/BA Everett Burdan said.

“In a way, it’s an opportunity for some of our members because [longshore] Local 18 has a lottery system where people can come in off the street,” Burdan said. “As long as they have a drivers’ license and a Social Security card, they can work for the day.”

But those “off the street” workers would not be able to work unless they had been screened. That gives union workers an advantage.

“If I have a readily available list, then a lot of members who aren’t working on the warehouse side might be able to go to the longshore side,” Burdan said.
Local 17 workers handle rice, fertilizer, bulk commodities, fly ash and do other work at the port such as unloading railcars.

But while there are advantages to having ID cards, the down side is a massive loss of privacy and due process, and a presumption of guilt if a person is denied a card.

“The whole concept of port security, in the way they’re implementing it, is such a façade,” Gratz said. “It has nothing to do with port security, it has to do with tracking longshore workers. Port security should include the health and safety of the workers, not just property.”

Long before the government came up with the idea of screening people, Local 26 came up with the idea of training workers to deal with known port hazards.

“We have specialized training in crowd control, terrorist awareness, CPR first aid, how to put fires out, we just finished a hazardous materials and explosive devices training,” Gratz said. “Local 26 negotiated all of that through the collective bargaining process.”