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80,000 apply for 2,400 dockworker positions at ports of LA/LB

THE US ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have for the first time in a decade hired new dockworkers, selecting 2,400 workers from a pool of 80,000 applicants by means of a lottery commissioned by the Pacific Maritime Association.

The newly hired dockworkers will be classified as non-union part-time employees, earning a starting salary of US$25 an hour. Known as "casuals," they'll also become eligible for future full-time union dockworker positions through the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Some 7,300 union dockworkers are employed at the ports. With this new crop of casuals, the part-time pool will number 7,000 workers. Together, the workers move 40 per cent of the nation's cargo coming through southern California's ports.

It will likely take more than a decade for the new casuals to land a union position, said Chris Tilly, who studies labour markets at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

"It used to be that you were a casual for maybe three to five years and then you moved up into the permanent full-time ranks. At this point, people have been waiting a dozen years or more," Mr Tilly was quoted as saying by Southern California public radio KPCC.

One of the unnamed casuals interviewed by KPCC who has worked 10 years at the ports explained that when promoting casuals to full-time, the union prioritises workers who have banked the most hours on the job. That has put him and his co-workers in a decade-long race to work as often as possible, he said. However, people in the casual pool often don't get called to work more than one or two days a week.

"I think it's possible that some casuals will remain casual for their entire careers," said Mr Tilly, noting another threat on the horizon - terminal operators are looking to automation to replace workers on the docks. "Longshore work, dock work is only going to get more automated, not less," he added.