Port Feels Tension of Technological Divide

By Kelly Kearsley, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash.

Jan. 14–Inside a gate at the APM Terminal in the Port of Tacoma sits an empty booth bearing a sign that reads “Ellis Island.”

It’s named after Robert Ellis, the longshore clerk who spent the better part of the last decade working inside it. Trucks pulled into the gate along the Sitcum Waterway, and Ellis read the numbers on the containers they were pulling. He’d type the number into a computer and tell the truck driver where to go.

Last fall a new system of cameras and computers replaced Ellis. He still works at the terminal, but now he’s inside a building 75 yards away.

“It’s just a lonely little monument now,” said Ellis, 51.

The system at APM’s gate is one example of the technology that’s starting to play a bigger role on the nation’s waterfront as U.S. port terminals search for ways to handle growing cargo volumes. The technology helps shipping companies and terminal operators track the location of containers and port equipment — and eventually decreases the time cargo spends on the terminal.

“We have limited assets in our ports, and environmentally, socially and economically, there’s not a way to create more of them,” said Nolan Gimpel, a vice president for TranSystems, a global transportation consulting company headquartered in Kansas City, Mo. “We have to figure out a way to get more trade through with what we have.”

In Tacoma, the technology automates and speeds up much of the work Ellis used to do at the truck gates. A camera identifies a cargo container, a computer helps find its destination and a printer gives the truck driver instructions on where to go. Terminal operators eventually think the technology will allow them to know a container’s exact location, cargo and destination at any point in its travels.

Much of the technology at West Coast port terminals, including in Tacoma, was introduced after 2002, when the Pacific Maritime Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union agreed on its West Coast labor contract. The PMA represents maritime employers and the ILWU represents dockworkers.

That contract allowed employers to introduce technology to replace work historically done by longshore workers. The contract required that any remaining work or new, equivalent work generated by the technology be given to the union.

Implementing that technology has been rocky for both sides — and some employers say introducing technology is more difficult at Northwest ports than others.

The PMA and the longshore union have arbitrated 91 cases between them dealing with technology since 2003, when the new contract went into effect. Forty of those cases originated at Northwest ports, primarily Tacoma and Seattle, according to the PMA.

Longshore officials say employers haven’t stuck to the rules of contract and have outsourced work that could have been done by the union.

Meanwhile, PMA officials say the union is focused on the details of the process rather than issues about the actual technology.

“The fact is we’ve arbitrated procedures in detail, where we’re arguing about whether we dotted an ‘i’ or crossed a ‘t,’” said Tom Edwards, vice president of contract administration and arbitration. “We’re still trying to get to the substantive issues of the technology.”

At the Pierce County Terminal — the largest terminal at the Port of Tacoma — Scott Miller mans the truck gate from an area in the administration building known as the “kitchen.” Like at APM, people no longer work at the actual gate, but instead in a building a few football fields away.

When trucks pull up to the PCT gate, optical character recognition technology — translating text into computer code — scans the container number, which then pops up on Miller’s computer screen, along with information about the truck. Miller, who’s working as a clerk that day, can see the video of the truck and the container it’s pulling on a monitor next to him.

He checks the monitor to make sure the number on his computer screen is right, and talks to the driver via microphone to gather more detail about the driver’s business at the terminal. This time everything’s in order.

“Here’s your ticket,” Miller tells the driver. The ticket — which tells the driver where to go on the terminal — prints out at the truck gate, and the driver pulls away.

Before terminals had OCR technology at their truck gates, longshore clerks would key in the container number themselves, reading either by being at the gate, or off a camera shot. Miller prefers typing in the numbers himself — it’s more accurate, he said.

But terminal operators say technology at the truck gates improves accuracy and saves a few seconds per transaction — time that adds up over the hundreds of transactions that occur each day. Use of the technology at the truck gate hasn’t eliminated the need for longshore clerks, who still check containers numbers for accuracy, troubleshoot problems and update the movement of containers in the yard.

Jack Craig, manager of the APM Terminal, said the gate technology reduced the clerk work by four or five shifts per week.

“That’s pretty minimal,” he said.

Terminal operators say the cost savings from a reduction of workers starts to add up once the technology — such as OCR scanners on the legs of the cranes to scan containers coming on and off ships — spreads around the terminal. Technology at the crane does eliminate the job of longshore clerks, who are now posted at the crane’s legs to record container numbers.

Coastwide and in Tacoma, the number of longshore clerks is actually growing because of the trade boom of recent years.

Tacoma has 105 longshore clerks and often uses other longshore workers — such as Miller, who is not a registered clerk — to fill in when there’s enough work. Randy Whitman, a Tacoma clerk, said the union is asking the PMA for another 13 clerks to keep pace with the work.

Steve Stallone, ILWU spokesman from the union’s headquarters in San Francisco, said the nuion agreed to the elimination of jobs due to technology. In return, it received pension increases and a guarantee from employers that longhore clerks would have a job until their retirement. At issue has been the work that’s left — or new work created by technology.

“The main problem we’ve had throughout is if they are using the technology to outsource work,” Stallone said. “We’ve had a very difficult time getting them to give us the information they are bound to give us so that we can determine whether or not the work is being outsourced.”

The 2002 contract set up a framework for introducing technology. It requires employers to write a “technology letter” that details the technology, how it’s used and which jobs will be affected.

In Tacoma, the longshore union fought what it said was outsourcing at one terminal.

The Pierce County Terminal — operated by Marine Terminals Corp. — expanded the OCR technology from its trucks to the container crane legs in 2005. The OCR scans the containers loaded on and off the ship and provides another data point for tracking the boxes. In the past, longshore clerks have done that work.

The technology, said Whitman, the Tacoma clerk, created a new amount of work that MTC delivered to people who weren’t marine clerks.

MTC declined to talk to The News Tribune.

Controversy over technology at the crane legs has led the company to turn it off twice, most recently in November. It remains off now, according to the union.

Conrad Spell, president of ILWU Local 23 in Tacoma, said because the OCR at the cranes is off, things at the terminal are going well.

Whether it’s harder to introduce technology into the Northwest depends on whom you ask.

Some terminal operators said they plan to put technology in their California terminals first, and implement it in the Northwest only after it’s running smoothly there. Edwards, with the PMA, said Southern California ports have had an edge when it comes to introducing technology.

“There’s more of an acceptance of the changes coming about,” he said.

But the Tacoma longshore union says that perception is wrong. Whitman, who serves on the union’s coastwide technology committee, said there are more than a dozen pending cases out of California that have been stuck in the “grievance machinery” and have yet to be resolved.

“They are every bit as diligent down there,” he said of the longshore union in California. “I think people are disgruntled up and down the coast.”

The PMA and the longshore union anticipate technology will again be a hot issue as the 2008 labor contract is negotiated.

Ed DeNike, president of the Seattle-based SSA Marine’s West Coast container operations, said some combination of OCR and radio frequency identification technology is already in place at most West Coast ports. SSA Marine operates terminals around the world, including in Seattle and California.

OCR is typically used at gates to scan containers. RFID tags are starting to be used on trucks at Southern Californian ports and in Seattle. The tags transmit data about the driver, his license and the trucking company to the terminals, according to a July issue of the Journal of Commerce.

RFID is still the future in Tacoma, where most terminals have recently introduced or plan to introduce a version of OCR technology at their gates.

“We are at a juncture because space is an overriding concern,” said Craig, with APM in Tacoma. “The need to support that trade growth is going to require technological solutions. It will be a continuing focus of terminal operators.”

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