The faces behind global trade
Virginia’s longshoremen help make the state’s ports competitive

by Elizabeth Cooper
for Virginia Business
September 2007

Even from 200 feet up in the cab of one of the world’s largest container cranes, Nick Glaszebrook could sense he was being watched. He lowered the crane’s spreader bar and deftly plucked a 45-foot yacht from a huge cargo ship, then gently placed it in the Elizabeth River.

Below, the owner of the multimillion-dollar craft didn’t take his eyes off Glaszebrook. “You’ve got to be careful so you don’t drop the boat,” says Glaszebrook. “That’s scary when taking it off, especially when the guy that owns the yacht is sitting there looking at you with binoculars.”

The unnerving scenario comes with the territory for this 31-year-old longshoreman. During seven years as a dockside crane operator at Norfolk International Terminals, Glaszebrook has moved all manner of unusual commodities. “I’ve moved trees that would drop your jaws,” he says, referring to giant redwoods. Other items on his out-of-the-ordinary list: helicopters, locomotives and the nose of a jumbo jet.

Glaszebrook is one of roughly 1,000 longshoremen in Virginia who load and unload cargo at the state’s three marine terminals — in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News. These crane operators, ship lashers and hustler drivers — to name a few of the colorful job titles — are the faces behind world trade, the worker bees in the global supply chain. With 65,000 members, the New York-based International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) is the largest union of maritime workers in North America. In Virginia, members of Local 1248 put in long hours, in all sorts of weather, and some of the jobs are dangerous.

A reminder of how dangerous came in July. That’s when union members mourned the death of 42-year-old longshoreman Vernon White who was crushed when a truck-size container was being lowered at Portsmouth Marine Terminal. The fatality — the third since 1999 at a Virginia terminal — is under investigation by White’s employer, Ceres Marine Terminals Inc., and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Glaszebrook, interviewed for this story before the fatality, says safety is the top priority for crane operators. From his perch above the container ships, he moves the heavy crane — weighing 1,900 metric tons — horizontally along the wharf on a set of super-size railroad tracks. Glaszebrook’s job is to lower the crane’s boom over the ship and then drop the spreader bar over a cargo container. Once the bar is in position, four twist locks snap into place. Then he’s ready to hoist as much as 60 long tons (or 134,400 pounds) up and over a ship’s deck with what looks like the ease of lifting a feather.

The crane’s 26-foot-wide beam can unload 38 containers per hour. Typically, today’s large ocean-going vessels hold 600 to 800 containers. A camera in the crane’s cab displays 30 feet on either side of the spreader bar. “I go out of my way to make sure everyone around me is safe,” he says. A typical shift lasts two to three hours until his breaster (partner) relieves him. Three hours later, they switch off again, and Glaszebrook returns to the cab. During a typical week, he works 40 to 50 hours.

A good portion of the state’s longshoremen, 400 to 500 members, work at Norfolk International Terminals (NIT), the largest of Virginia’s marine terminals. It sits on 672 acres off Hampton Boulevard. Nearly 600 additional acres will come into play with the development of Craney Island in Portsmouth. The first phase of that project isn’t scheduled for completion until 2017, but port officials say it’s key in sustaining Hampton Road’s rising profile as a dominant port.

Over the past year, the Port of Hampton Roads handled more than 2 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) — the standard measurement for cargo containers. By 2035, the port could handle 10 million TEUs. That would put it ahead of the country’s largest cargo port in New York. Virginia’s development into the third largest container port on the East Coast (behind New York and Savannah, Ga.) has been helped along by the productivity of longshoremen.

With technological advancements, today’s ILA members must have brains as well as brawn. “In the old days, all you needed was a strong back and a weak mind,” recalls Edward L. Brown Sr., an international vice president with the ILA who joined the union more than 50 years ago. “Now you have to be able to operate new equipment and get maximum productivity out of the equipment.”

Virginia’s state-owned ports are run by a central operator, Virginia International Terminals, an independent, nonprofit agency that can negotiate with the union. Over the years, the relationship has been pretty stable, with Virginia avoiding the massive strikes that have crippled West Coast ports. The current ILA contract for Local 1248 took effect in 2004 and expires in 2010. Unlike the West Coast work stoppage in 2002, which paralyzed ports and sent business to the East Coast, there hasn’t been a stoppage in Virginia in more than a decade.

Most longshoremen start at the port as hustlers (truck drivers). After about a year, they can move into other areas. There are jobs as chassis stackers, transtainer operators (who run the rubber-tire gantry cranes that service rail cars), straddle carrier operators who move containers into position and, finally, dockside crane operators, the highest skill level for an ILA worker.
Glaszebrook spent six years as a straddle carrier operator before moving to the big cranes, which are as tall as a 19-story hotel. When he first climbed aboard the crane, he admits to being scared. “You have to be,” he says. Amusement park rides no longer thrill him. “I don’t get on Ferris wheels. It doesn’t do anything for me.” On the other hand, there are advantages to working so high up. “You can see some beautiful sunsets.” He’s come a long way from his first job on the water as a laborer throwing cocoa beans onto ships.

Crane operators are among the highest paid at the port, earning between $80,000 and $85,000 per year; however, other jobs also pay well. Experienced straddle carrier operators say they can make more than $100,000 annually with overtime. The 40-foot-tall straddle carriers take containers to the ships, with the operator using the equipment to “straddle” the boxes when picking them up. A computer in the cab tells the driver what containers to collect and where to take them. NIT currently has 180 straddle operators but eventually will employ 300, looking to the ranks of forklift operators and hustlers to join the straddle pool.

It’s not an easy job. The driver must manipulate the carrier horizontally instead of backward and forward. “I promised myself I’d never be a strad operator,” says Herman Carrington III, 33. But he has spent 10 of his 12 years as a longshoreman driving straddle carriers. “I wanted to be part of the future, and I was told that straddle carriers were the future of the port.” Still Carrington, a fourth-generation longshoreman, nearly lost his resolve when he ran into a mezzanine while training at Portsmouth Marine Terminal. “I almost quit, but my dad advised me to stick with it.”

While Carrington always wanted to be a longshoreman, Michael Gore never entertained such thoughts. “This is the last place I wanted to work,” says the Hampton University political science graduate. However, he realized that his father’s 37 years at NIT had provided well for the family. Twelve years after coming to the port, he has no regrets. “It’s allowed me to do a lot of things for my family. People say you’re wasting your education, but once you have an education, it’s yours forever.”

Pride in their work and camaraderie within the ILA also is a plus. “It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Asian, Hispanic,” says Gore. “You don’t see color. You see your union brother. If we don’t pull together and get the ships out of here, the ships will go to another port.”

There are only about 40 women members of Local 1248. Annette Stallworth has worked as a line handler for nine years and currently oversees her co-workers on the ropes. The 41-year-old is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to tie up docking ships and untie vessels preparing to set sail from the Norfolk and Portsmouth terminals. Last year, the terminals handled 2,260 ship calls. The number of women line handlers is growing. “Men feel no one can dock a vessel as well as they could,” she says. “We’ve been out there and proven we’re just as good.”

Line handlers are notified two hours before a vessel is due to dock or set sail. They must be at the pier 30 minutes before work begins and are guaranteed two hours of work per ship. It takes about 25 minutes to dock a vessel and five to 10 minutes to sail it. If the craft is five minutes late, line handlers are paid for an additional hour of work.

With each assignment involving a different ship with different constrictions, Stallworth says her job is never boring. She describes the pay as good with new line handlers earning $16 per hour. Still, it’s difficult to answer calls in the middle of the night. While line handlers are required to work at least 1,300 hours a year, they can refuse assignments, something Stallworth is learning to do for the sake of her husband and 11-year-old son.

Although the terminals represent the hub of activity for the Port of Hampton Roads, much of the behind-the-scenes action takes place at Local 1248’s headquarters on East Princess Anne Road in Norfolk. Every day at 7 a.m., noon and 5 p.m., as many as 125 longshoremen, who are not part of regular gangs or whose gangs are not working that day, arrive for job assignments at the area’s marine terminals.

Each longshoreman presents an identification card lettered A to O. “A” cardholders are the most senior workers and often receive the most plum assignments. “When you come here, you really don’t know what you’ll be doing that day,” says John C. Williams, safety training instructor for the Hampton Roads Shipping Association. “New people have got to spend time holding the wall up. You may come in here two or three days and not get a job, but on the other hand, you may get a job that lasts two or three days.”
Herman Carrington Jr., a longshoreman since 1976 and the father of Herman Carrington III, works as a dispatcher at Local 1248, sending workers to various assignments. “There’s so much freedom here as far as whether to work,” he says. “We teach them to support the port, not themselves, because their performance determines whether or not a ship comes back.”

Like his son, Carrington wasn’t sure he would make it in the profession. Now, he’s so pumped about the port’s growth that he doesn’t want to retire. “This is my port,” he says. “This is what raised four children and promised a future for my family, and I’m proud of this port.”

Williams predicts that Hampton Roads, with its 50-foot-deep channels and increasing capacity, will one day surpass New York as the nation’s largest container port. “This port is going to be number one,” he says. “The bottom line is business. Let’s get it done safely, quickly and without damage, and get these ships in and out.”