Unloading the APL China

Larry Hansen, Del Bates, and Jeff Vigna watched in disbelief as the huge ship APL China was towed into port at Seattle’s Terminal 5. This was going to be difficult. Larry, Del, and Jeff were all members of ILWU Local #19, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Longshoremen are dock workers who load and unload ships Several hundred longshoremen worked in Seattle at the busy container terminals along the waterfront. They operated the huge cranes that lifted cargo containers on and off ships, moving the containers between trucks, trains, and ships. Larry was the President of Local #19.

Del was a member of the union’s Labor Relations Committee, and Jeff was a member of the union’s Crane Safety Committee. The three of them were watching the China dock because unloading it was going to be a real challenge.

The China had been caught in a severe ocean storm on its journey across the Pacific from Asia. More than 300 of the 5,000 cargo containers it had been carrying had been lost at sea, and the China itself had nearly sunk.

The containers that remained on the ship showed just how bad the storm had been: instead of lining up in neat rows above the ship deck, containers dangled in every direction.Some had been twisted and broken by the force of the storm.

Others were crushed. And still others hung off the ship at odd angles, hanging on by tangles of cable. Loose cargo, that had spilled out of the broken containers, was everywhere. Each of these containers was (or had originally been) 40 feet long by 9 feet high and weighed dozens of tons.

Getting the containers off the ship safely, without anyone getting hurt or killed, was going to be a real challenge. As he watched the China dock, Larry thought about the events that had led to the creation of the ILWU, the labor union he, Jeff, and Del worked for.

A century earlier – long before the days of huge container ships and cranes – cargo was bundled in rope nets and crates to be carried by clipper ship across the sea. Loading and unloading ships was difficult and dangerous. It could take up to two weeks to unload a single ship.

The work was also impossible to schedule. Remember, this was long before telephone or radio, so no one on shore knew exactly when a ship would come in to shore. Thus, instead of hiring full-time workers, ship owners would hire men only when they needed them, finding them by walking along the docks calling out, “Men along the shore!”

This call led to the name “longshoreman” for someone who loaded or unloaded a ship. But many longshoremen felt that dangerous work with no regular schedule and low pay was not fair. They decided the only way to get better conditions was to band together in a team, to form a labor union, as people in other occupations had done. 

The first longshore unions along the West Coast were formed in the late 1800s.But, because each port had a different union and these unions didn’t really communicate with each other, there wasn’t much of a team. When longshoremen in one port went on strike to try to win better wages or working conditions, ship owners could easily send their ships to a different port.

In that way, longshoremen were defeated in strikes in 1916, 1919, and 1921. In the 1930’s, in the middle of the Great Depression, the longshoremen tried to unionize again. Under the leadership of their president, Harry Bridges, they created a union that would unite longshore workers up and down the Pacific Coast.

They went on strike in 1934 to try to win better working conditions: a union-controlled hiring hall that would end discrimination and favoritism in hiring; a coastwide contract, with all workers on the Pacific Coast receiving the same basic wages; and a six-hour work day with a fair hourly wage.

Even when the strike turned violent – two workers were killed in San Francisco on July 5, “Bloody Thursday,” in San Francisco – the longshoremen stayed together and they eventually won. Then they were able to work with ship owners and businesses to make longshore work safer for everyone. Today, Larry thought, everything was different.

His union, Local #19 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, employed several hundred people, including many women. They earned good wages and had to have many more skills than in the old days. The use of containers – essentially big truck trailers – to carry goods meant that longshore workers now operated giant container cranes instead of lifting out crates and nets by hand.

A ship carrying 5,000 containers could be unloaded in just 15 hours. And these days, since there were clear rules for everyone involved in the ship loading process, Larry could work closely with the shipping companies, making sure their cargo was loaded or unloaded as quickly and safely as possible. Larry wondered how the lessons of his union would help him and his colleagues and they tried to deal with the badly damaged China.

Larry, Del, and Jeff quickly called a meeting with the staff from APL, the shipping company that owned the China. Unloading the damaged ship could be very dangerous. Regular container cranes simply weren’t equipped to deal with containers that had been damaged like this.

The APL staff recommended that in addition to the regular container cranes they bring a mobile crane to the dock (the kind typically used when building a building) as well as a crane that would sit on a barge in the water. These two extra cranes would help pick up containers that were difficult to reach. APL had the names of two companies they could call to rent these cranes.

In addition, because the China itself had suffered such heavy damage during the storm, a crew from the local shipyard would need to start working on it immediately, even while containers were being unloaded. The longshoremen agreed that extra cranes were not only needed but were probably the only way to get the damaged containers off the ship.

But, they worried about safety. Of the four teams that would be working on the China – on the container cranes, the mobile crane, the barge crane, and on the ship itself – their team was the only one that had any experience moving containers. And no one knew how the mobile cranes, which were strong and flexible but could also swing around, would do lifting the heavy containers.

Jeff dealt with safety issues on the docks every day. He knew that a single mistake on the China – a container that swung wide as it was being unloaded, or a damaged container that fell apart as it was lifted – could kill someone. He and his colleagues at APL quickly started talking about their safety plan.

Larry thought about the lessons his union had gained in nearly a century of work. He was convinced those lessons held the clue to the China. The answer, they all decided, was that all the different workers would have to work as a team. The three different types of cranes would have to be coordinated, so they didn’t accidentally unbalance the ship.

And they’d have to work closely with APL, to make sure the ship could be repaired even as containers were lifted off. The group agreed on a plan. ILWU workers would supervise the activities of each of the three cranes.

Because, even though none of them had ever before operated a mobile crane or a barge crane, they were the only ones who had ever lifted a container with a crane… and they knew best what would be safe. For every lift, they agreed, one ILWU worker would be near the container being lifted and another would be in the crane cab.

They would communicate by radio, since the crane operator would have no way of knowing how damaged the container was or even how best to lift it. They quickly decided that the standard practice of lowering containers directly onto truck beds was too dangerous this time. Some containers were so damaged that they fell apart as they were lifted, with tons of contents spilling out.

If a container fell apart over a truck, or if one of the less accurate mobile cranes couldn’t position the container properly, the truck driver or others on the dock could be injured. Instead, the containers would be lowered directly onto the dock.

Del spent a week operating a crane unloading the China. Normally, he knew, the emphasis would be on speed, and he wouldn’t need to talk with anyone else. He knew exactly how to position his crane over a container and then lift it to the dock.

But on the China, he needed to work much more closely with other workers, even those who worked for one of the mobile crane companies and were not part of his union. He had worked on ships for years, but this one was completely different.

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This material was prepared by the Magnuson Partnership for International Trade & Transportation, a project of the Port of Seattle and Metropolitan King county.