Five Longshore Workers were killed on the job in 2002
Five Longshore Workers were killed on the job in 2002
Five Dockworkers Died on the Job in 2002
In the last six months there have been five fatalities among International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) waterfront workers, each more horrific than the last.
On Sept. 3 ILWU Local 26 watchman Rudy Acosta was run over and killed by a top handler at the Pacific Container Terminal operated by SSA in Long Beach
On July 23 Richie Lopez, Jr. of ILWU Local 46 in Port Hueneme was run over by a heavy forklift.
On June 1 ILWU Local 14 member Dick Peters was checking the hatches of a ship being loaded in the Port of Eureka. No one saw what happened, but apparently the ship-board gantry crane swung and crushed Peters against the ship itself.
On March 15, Mario Gonzalez, a member of ILWU Local 26, was operating a huge mill that shreds cars into scrap metal at Hugo Neu-Prolers' facility at the Port of Los Angeles. The machine jammed and Gonzalez went in to fix it. But the hydraulic-powered, several-ton door closed on his chest, killing him.
A day earlier on March 14 foreman John Prohoroff of ILWU Local 94 was routinely preparing a ship to be worked at SSA’s Long Beach terminal. The line on one of the ship’s cranes broke, dropping a 3,000-pound metal ring 30 feet and hitting Prohoroff. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
