by David Ball
Staff Writer
Homer Wright’s father, a Jacksonville longshoreman, didn’t want his son to follow his footsteps out to the docks. In those days, the manual labor of moving goods to and from cargo ships was the definition of back-breaking.
“My dad felt the work was too dangerous and too hard,” said Wright, whose older brother had already given up trying to persuade dad to work at the port and instead found a “safer” job in the military.
“I told my father a guy I had went to school with, that his father had gotten him a union card,” added Wright. “I guess that kind of lifted something in him, because that’s how I got my union card.”
Since that day in 1970, Wright has worked the seaport as a member of the International Longshoreman’s Association Local 1408, quickly moving his way up from lugging heavy coffee bags and reams of paper to his current job operating the large cranes that now do most of the lifting.
This year, at the age of 55 (he’s now 56), Wright set a local port record by moving 20- and 40-foot containers off ships and onto semi truck chassis at a pace of more than 47 per hour, more than one and a half times the national average of 30 per hour, according to the ILA.
Wright credits the rest of the crew and said they all just wanted to get off early that day. He said he’s typical of many longshoremen, who are the hard-working and sometimes overlooked lifeblood of one of the busiest ports on the eastern seaboard, and one that pumps several billion dollars into the economy of Northeast Florida.
The port’s presence
More than 7,000 people work at Jacksonville ports. Many are longshoremen, and another 43,000 area jobs depend on the local maritime industry.
Although some private harbors exist along the St. Johns River, the majority of those workers are employed by companies leasing space at public facilities owned by the Jacksonville Port Authority, known by its brand name JaxPort.
JaxPort operates a cruise terminal serving Carnival Cruise Lines that generates a reported $40 million, but the bulk of the business is carried out at marine cargo terminals at Blount Island and at Talleyrand east of Downtown. The yet-to-be built Dames Point terminal near Blount Island should be online by 2009.
More than 8 million metric tons of cargo passed through JaxPort in 2006, including 610,000 automobiles and 4 million tons of containerized items like grocery and consumer goods, natural stone and gasoline and other fuels.
Moving all of those goods are longshoremen – not to be confused with stevedores, who plan and organize the logistics of shipping and moving cargo and containers. They put the longshoremen to work.
The Union between import and export
According to local Union President Vince Cameron, the name longshoreman is rumored to have originated from ship captains who would look “along the shore” for workers to unload cargo.
In those early years, being a longshoreman meant manually loading and unloading loose cargo into nets and moving them to the docks, at which point it was moved, sometimes on the backs of the longshoremen, to warehouses or to be shipped again on trains or other ships. Work was long and injuries were common.
But 50 years ago, containerized shipping revolutionized the industry and led to the modern longshoreman, such as Cameron. He arrived at Talleyrand terminal on a recent day in a chrome-covered sedan and dressed in a crisp suit and gold watch. He had just come from the funeral of Ernest Hill, a former Jacksonville longshoremen and father of state Sen. Tony Hill.
“Ernie worked out here for 36 years and was one of our pillars,” said Cameron, exemplifying the historical roots and the current political reach of his organization and its 1,100 members.
Later, Cameron jumped behind the controls of a backhoe and, after a few failed attempts, put the machine in gear and grinned as he moved it to a flat-bed trailer for transport. He said it’s part of the job he misses as he now focuses on structuring labor agreements, ensuring worker safety and lobbying industry and political leaders on regulations affecting longshoremen.
“I’m an administrator now more than anything, and it’s a pretty stressful job,” said Cameron, who’s into the second year of his three-year term. “There is a lot of personal issues that get in the way of the professional environment. Every decision you make, you’re either a good guy in somebody’s book or a bad guy.”
But since the formation of the ILA union in 1936, it’s been through work of people like Cameron that 45,000 national members have been assured job stability, outstanding health and pension benefits and salaries in Jacksonville ranging from $35,000 to more than $120,000.
But to earn those wages the longshoremen need work, and that is secured through port companies like Stevedoring Services of America (SSA), which contracts with the ILA to provide jobs for various shippers in the port.
“The union work force is very experienced, and a lot have been on the waterfront for over 40 years,” said Frank McBride, SSA operations manager at Talleyrand. “It’s important that everybody sees eye to eye on the way things are done. We are bound by the same contract, and everybody adheres to that so we work well and go home safely.”
Even non-union is still union
But ILA doesn’t have the market cornered on longshoremen, as some Teamsters, who normally drive trucks, also work the ports. Some companies, such as Coastal Maritime Stevedoring at Blount Island, hire their own longshoremen as employees, although they still organize their own smaller unions.
John Mullins, vice president of marketing and logistics for Coastal, said some longshoremen choose to forego the membership dues of the union and instead work a variety of different jobs as an employee.
“We have a wide variety of labor tasks,” said Mullins. “We do break-bulk, heavy-lift, steel products, aluminum products, cars, construction, lumber. Sometimes in a union environment, at a higher seniority, you may only want to work on car ships, which is fine.”
Mullins, who started out as a longshoreman in the ILA, said there is no rift or competition between union and non-union workers. It’s this stability and diversified work force, many say, that makes the Port of Jacksonville so attractive to importers and exporters.
“We handle our labor in the way we handle so many diverse types of cargo,” said Nancy Rubin, director of communications and public relations for JaxPort. “We have union and non-union working side-by-side, and that makes us unique.”
Another selling point for Jacksonville’s port is its location. Railroads, the St. Johns River, and highways like I-10 and I-95 can take domestic goods from all over the country to the port, and those same routes can take imported foreign goods to anywhere in the U.S.
The port’s reach will expand even more by 2009, when Tokyo-based Mitsui O.S.K lines opens a direct container shipping line between Jacksonville and Asia at the new Dames Point terminal. JaxPort estimates the terminal will generate nearly $1 billion in annual economic benefit and create 1,600 port jobs along with 6,000 private sector jobs and 4,000 related support positions in Jacksonville.
Cameron said the ILA will be ready to meet those labor demands, but that usually means getting the family involved. Like Wright, Cameron and hundreds of other port workers have followed in the footsteps of their fathers or other relatives to become longshoremen.
Although Wright’s father first dissuaded him from becoming a longshoreman, Wright has taken a different approach with his children, although, to his regret, none made the choice to join him on the docks.
“This is the best job I’ve ever had, and I really would’ve wanted my 22-year-old to be a longshoreman,” said Wright. “I hate that he didn’t, ‘cause right now it would’ve really paid off. I think it would’ve been a very positive life for him. The port is growing, and things are looking up, where that might not be the case everywhere else.”
Jacksonville Seaport Annual Economic Impact
Source: Jacksonville Port Authority, compiled from Martin Associates 2004 Study and 2006 update
• 50,000 jobs related to cargo shipping activity
• $2.7 billion generated from:
• $1.3 billion in port workers’ wages and salaries
• $743 million in business revenue from port companies
• $239 million in local purchases by port businesses
• $119 million in state and local taxes paid by port businesses
• $258 million in U.S. Customs revenue
Port of Jacksonville 2006
Source: Jacksonville Port Authority, compiled from Port Import Export Reporting Service/Journal of Commerce.
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