New Emphasis on Tourism Changing Old Union Town

Jack Cukrov of San Pedro is a union man, proud to say he has never crossed a picket line.

Cukrov began his career as a longshoreman 20 years ago and for the last several years has worked as a union dispatcher, sending linesmen--longshoremen whose job it is to tie down the huge vessels that dock at Los Angeles Harbor--out to work. It is a second-generation job for the Cukrov family; his father was a longshoreman too.

And though he doesn’t know much about a dispute his local is having with two new dinner cruise ships at the Port of Los Angeles, Cukrov says he knows one thing: “I’ll never go on those ships. If I see a union man going on those ships, I’ll turn him in.”

Such strong union sympathies are prevalent in San Pedro, a community that some like to say was built on the backs of union men who worked at the port, both on the docks and on the ships. Cukrov’s union, Local 13 of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, is hoping to capitalize on those sentiments as it wages a campaign to persuade the two dinner cruise operations to use longshoremen as linesmen.

During the last several weeks, the union has distributed leaflets where the vessels berth, asking patrons not to dine aboard the ships. Declared Local 13 President Rene Herrera: “I know we’ve cost them already.”

But times in tight-knit San Pedro are changing. With a new emphasis on tourism, the dinner cruise ships--frequented by people who do not live in this seaside community--say they are barely feeling the pinch from the union’s efforts.

San Pedro “does have kind of the label of a union town,” acknowledged Michael Morisi, general manager of the Spirit of Los Angeles, one of the two ships targeted by the longshoremen. “But it’s also a town that is putting forth a tremendous effort to establish itself as a location for tourism and growth, and the majority of our business comes from the city of Los Angeles, Orange County and the Valley.”

Indeed, one recent Friday evening, as union members passed out their flyers at the other ship, the California Hornblower, they found themselves greeting parents and teachers at a fund-raiser for an Inglewood high school. Some were sympathetic, but none gave up their tickets.

And the union itself--which initially pressured each ship company to employ at least two longshoremen to tie down, load and unload the vessels, as well as a clerk and a supervisor--has scaled back its demands. It is now calling for the ships to hire one linesman to tie and untie the vessels, a job that would provide an hour or two of work for a longshoreman each time the ships sail.

Herrera says the dispute is a matter of both money and turf. The ships berth at docks at the World Cruise Center that have traditionally been worked by longshoremen. And though Local 13 is not trying to organize the dinner cruise work force, it is pressing the Spirit and the Hornblower to raise their employees’ pay to what the union says is the prevailing standard in the community--the longshoremen’s hourly rate of $21.

Neither Morisi nor Mike Watson, owner of San Francisco-based Hornblower Dining Yachts, would disclose what he pays his workers, except to say that his rates are fair. Employees aboard such ships are generally paid like waiters and waitresses: they earn a relatively low hourly salary, which is augmented by tips.

Together, the ships employ about 300 people in peak season, from May to September, and about half that when business is slower. Many of their employees are part-timers, in many cases college students.

Watson said that, unlike the 20,000- to 60,000-ton vessels generally manned by longshoremen, the 183-foot-long Hornblower weighs just 87 tons and is easy to maneuver alongside the dock. Likewise, the 192-foot-long Spirit of Los Angeles weighs under 100 tons, which places it in the “small boat” category as defined by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“Basically, we’re in the entertainment business,” Watson said. “We’re self-contained on these boats that we operate, in terms of the boat crew providing all the services that we need for our guests.”

In Morisi’s view, the dinner cruise operations are providing a valuable boost to the San Pedro economy--a boost, he said, that can only help the longshoremen who live there.

“We’re trying very hard to create a popular attraction here in San Pedro,” he said, “which is increasing awareness of this harbor area to 200,000 people a year that, quite frankly, may not come down here otherwise.”