Richard Halstead - Marin Independent Journal, November 15, 2007

Three employees of the private contractor in charge of cleaning up the San Francisco Bay oil spill have blown the whistle on their employer, saying their company failed to hire enough staff to respond quickly.

The employees, who insist on remaining anonymous, are communicating through their union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the union, said he knows the individuals and said they work for the Marine Spill Response Corp.

All oil tankers, as well as nontank vessels weighing more than 300 gross tons, are required to have state and federally approved oil spill contingency plans. The operator of the Cosco Busan, Fleet Management Ltd., contracted with the Marine Spill Response Corp. and the National Response Corp. to carry out its spill response plan.

In their letter, the Marine Spill employees write that, "there were not enough dedicated, qualified responders in the Bay Area available to help with the clean-up and recovery efforts immediately following the incident when we had the best chance of containing the spill and recovering the oil."

November 14, 2007 - Contact: Tracy Fairchild, (916) 651-4003

Employees of Contracted Oil Spill Clean-up Company Say Marine Spill Response Corporation's "Response" Was Crippled by Mismanagement and Short-staffing

SAN FRANCISCO--State Senator Carole Migden (D-San Francisco/North Bay) and State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) have received confidential information from employees of the firm in charge of cleaning up the San Francisco Bay oil spill, claiming that their company failed to hire enough staff who could respond quickly to last week's spill.

Employees of the Marine Spill Response Corporation, the private firm contracted to clean up the spill, allege that staff and resources cutbacks delayed a rapid response to the oil spill; a delay that exacerbated the damage caused by the oil spill as the powerful tides and strong currents of the San Francisco Bay pushed the fuel to Marin County and Ocean Beach in San Francisco.

"These employees are telling us that a quick response from sufficient numbers of Marine Spill Response Corporation's trained staff is what is supposed to happen under the company's agreements with both state and federal agencies, but the company's short staffing in the Bay Area made that impossible," said Migden. "It's essential that investigators meet with these employees immediately to evaluate the veracity of their report."

By William Brand and Harry Harris - STAFF WRITERS, Bay Area Insider, December 05, 2007

OAKLAND - A fatal accident that killed a man at the Port of Oakland Monday night is the second in as many months and has longshoremen worried about speed outweighing safety on the docks.

The accident occurred about 8 p.m. Monday on the Hanjin shipping property, 2500 Middle Harbor Road, Oakland. Police said a large truck struck and killed Edward Hall, 47, of San Francisco.

Hall, an employee of Hoyt-Shepston Marine, a freight-forwarding agency, was declared dead at the scene. Cal-OSHA is investigating the accident, a port official said.

Another death occurred at the port Sept. 24, when Reginald Ross, 39, a longshoreman, was crushed in a shipping container accident aboard a ship. The next day, Local 10, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, shut down the port in mourning.

Hall was not an ILWU member and longshoremen did not stop work Tuesday, but union spokesman Craig Merrilees said union members are upset.

"This could have been anyone on the dock," Merrilees said. "Longshore work is dangerous, but it doesn't have to be so deadly. Two deaths in two months is too many and it makes you wonder if all the shipping companies think about is time and
money.

San Francisco Chronicle - September 25, 2007

Workers at the Port of Oakland stayed off the job Tuesday after a longshoreman was crushed to death by a shipping container, bringing the loading and unloading of ships at one of the nation's busiest ports to a halt, officials said.

The 15-ton container was being locked onto the top of another container on the deck of a cargo ship when it slipped and fell on the worker Monday afternoon, said John Showalter, spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

The Alameda County Coroner's office identified the victim as Reginald Ross, 39, of San Francisco.

The nearly 1,500 members of ILWU Longshore Local 10, which represents dockside workers at the port, did not come to work Tuesday as investigators probed the cause of the accident.

Trucks stuck outside closed shipping terminals were unable to unload containers bound for ships stranded by the workers' absence, bringing maritime operations to a standstill. Seven ships in all were unable to load or unload cargo Tuesday, Port of Oakland spokeswoman Marilyn Sandifur said.

The Hawaii Superferry presents a classic case of how not to do business in Hawaii. Superferry's lack of planning and violation of the Hawaii Environmental Protection Act has created a public debacle, inconvenienced its customers and put Hawaii's environment at risk.

Three years ago the Sierra Club, Maui Tomorrow and Kahului Harbor Coalition asked the Hawaii Superferry and the Lingle administration to complete an environmental review of the Superferry. Unknown environmental and public safety risks, concerned neighbor island communities and a clear reading of the law demanded it.

The review would have occurred while other planning proceeded. The administration and Superferry corporation, however, decided to gamble and chose to skip this mandatory environmental disclosure process. A unanimous Supreme Court decision -- announced just hours after oral argument -- called their bluff.

Then, despite the decision from Hawaii's highest court, Superferry executives decided to roll the dice again and start service early. Again, they lost when a judge ordered them to cease service to Maui.

Hayward man awarded partner's pension benefits Dock workers' union gains contract changes for gay and lesbian workers

By Josh Richman, San Jose Mercury News STAFF WRITER

Marvin Burrows of Hayward simply wanted what he believed his late partner of 51 years had left him, but by pursuing it, he apparently has won new rights for about 5,500 union members and retirees across Northern California.

Burrows, 71, fought for pension benefits left by his partner, Bill Swenor, since Swenor's sudden death in March 2005 at age 66. Last week, International Longshore and Warehouse Union locals 6 and 17 —” based in Oakland and West Sacramento, respectively — announced theyy had renegotiated their contracts to grant pension benefits to domestic partners, and made the change retroactive to include Burrows.

"Our union's motto is, 'An injury to one is an injury to all,' and we definitely feel that applies in this case," ILWU spokesman John Showalter said Wednesday, adding the union was proud to have worked with the National Center for Lesbian Rights to address Burrows' case.

The San Francisco-based NCLR went to bat for Burrows in July 2005 after the Emeryville-based Industrial Employers and Distributions Association — representing more than 150 public- and private-sectorr employers in their labor relations — twice rejected his claims for Swenor's pension benefits, claiming federal law doesn't recognize same-sex couples as spouses.

By Mahtaub Hojjati - San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 19, 2007

Iran's despotic mullahs are worried more about Teamsters union President James Hoffa than Iran's Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Why? They are frightened by the prospect that Hoffa's escalating voice may give birth to an Iranian version of Solidarity's Lech Walesa, whose courageous and charismatic leadership transformed Poland's workers into an invincible political force.

A gem of an alliance has been cut between Hoffa and Iran's labor movement. In December 2005, the Teamsters president demanded, in a letter to Iran's notoriously belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the release of 14 labor union workers unjustly detained and beaten. In July 2007, after the jailing and brutalization of Mansour Ossanlou, a Bus Transport Workers Union leader, Hoffa similarly insisted on his freedom and condemned the Iranian government's flagrant disdain for freedom of association and expression.

Iran's theocrats fear Hoffa because they worry about the close nexus between free labor unions and political freedom. Last year, two prominent Iranian labor leaders, Mahmoud Salehi and Jalal Hosseini, were tried and convicted of internal subversion in secret proceedings conducted by the Saqqez Revolutionary Court.

By Stanley Holmes - JULY 30, 2007, Business Week

The global economy has given consumers a lot to worry about these days: lead-laced toy trains, tainted toothpaste and pet food, and counterfeit drugs. Now add this to your list of fears: commercial jetliners that are routinely repaired in maintenance shops around the world that the Federal Aviation Administration has neither the funds nor the staff to oversee properly.

No one seems more worried than some of the FAA'S 3,000 inspectors themselves. They are sounding the alarm that foreign maintenance shops receive inadequate oversight and have become a risk for shoddy work and counterfeit parts. In interviews and in recent congressional testimony, inspectors and their union representatives say they are able to scrutinize thoroughly the work of only a handful of the 698 overseas maintenance contractors licensed by the FAA. These facilities are sometimes found to hire unskilled and untrained employees. Inspectors, moreover, don't have any ability to oversee an unknown number of obscure maintenance shops that lack FAA certification.

By Joseph Plaster - San Francisco Bay Guardian, July 17, 2007

More than 100 tractor trailers were lined up at 6:30 a.m., inching toward the Port of Oakland's Terminal 7, waiting for their next load. Against the backdrop of the San Francisco skyline, a mammoth freight ship emblazoned with the name Hyundai glided toward the port, pregnant with multicolor shipping containers.

A driver told the Guardian that he expected to be in line for at least two hours waiting to drop off the empty container attached to his big rig. His 1989 truck lacks air-conditioning, so the windows were rolled down, allowing diesel exhaust to pollute the air he was breathing.

It's the same scene at many of the port's other terminals: long lines of ancient trucks slowly snaking toward their destinations, their primarily immigrant drivers performing the essential and thankless task of transporting cheap clothes from Asia to the nation's big-box retailers or helping to export California's agricultural goods to Hawaii.

The fourth-busiest container port in the nation, the Port of Oakland is the economic engine of the region, providing thousands of jobs and more than $1 billion in revenue. But activists say that the port system has also led to sweatshoplike conditions for truckers and created a health crisis for the surrounding community.

By Ronald D. White - Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, June 18, 2007

On the last morning of her life, 26-year-old Piper Inness Cameron was doing exactly what she had always wanted to do.

She was working on the deck of a tugboat and counting the days until she, like her father, would be piloting one. There were 41 to go.

Then, at 11 a.m. Feb. 20 while moving through Santa Monica Bay about two miles off Marina del Rey, something went wrong. A line linking the tug and the barge it was towing suddenly struck Cameron and slammed her into a railing. She died before reaching a hospital.

The accident almost four months ago was a wake-up call for the unions representing more than 15,000 West Coast maritime industry workers. The swell in global trade and the technological advances that have made shipping more efficient than ever before have compounded the hazards of maritime jobs, and labor leaders are calling for new safety studies and standards.

"We can't let her death go in vain," said Alan Cote, national president of the Inlandboatmen's Union.