Longshoremen

Labor negotiators for dockworkers and some of the world's biggest shipping lines open talks today on a new contract with the aim of avoiding the kind of bitter dispute that paralyzed West Coast ports for 10 days in 2002. With 14 weeks to go before the current agreement expires, this marks the earliest start yet for contract talks between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Assn., both based in San Francisco.

As a West Coast contract covering 26,000 dockworkers ran out Tuesday evening, concern rippled among U.S. retailers about a possible strike -- even though talks are continuing. "From our perspective, it's critical that these negotiations get resolved peacefully and that a new contract gets put in place as quickly as possible," said Jonathan Gold, who focuses on supply-chain and customs issues as a vice president of the National Retail Federation, a trade group.

A government lawsuit against the International Longshoremen's Union, aimed at wresting control of the nation's docks from alleged organized crime, was dismissed by a federal judge who called the effort well-intentioned but overreaching. The civil racketeering lawsuit targeted union officials and mobsters. It had dragged for two years through pretrial meetings and motions until U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser granted the union's request to dismiss.

For some 12,000 California dockworkers, the ship has come in. West Coast marine terminal operators have agreed to pay $12.9 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by nonunion dockworkers who claimed that they were being shortchanged on their hours and paychecks.

The waterfront was booming in 2005 when Joey Hurtado inherited his uncle's longshore card. Consumers were spending, and the toys, clothes and other goods they bought had to be hauled across the Pacific from factories in Asia. As a nonunion "casual" on the wharves in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Hurtado got the chance to train and work at one of the nation's highest-paying blue-collar jobs.

After a lonely three-week voyage across the Pacific, the multinational crew of the British-flagged container ship Hyundai Tokyo arrives at the largest U.S. port complex and proceeds to do irreparable damage to the stereotype of the hard-living international merchant seaman. The 28 sailors are as well-mannered as young men meeting their girlfriends' parents. The favored drink is Gatorade. The big snack: Blue Bunny Caramel Chocolate Nut ice cream cones. The most popular purchase is from Victoria's Secret -- not the catalog for those long nights at sea, but Amber Romance body spray or Love Spell, which they mail to wives back home.

Re "Glug, glug," Opinion, Dec. 22 The waterfront has always been a telling economic indicator. For years, longshoremen have been able to describe the state of the economy because they see what comes into the country and what goes out. Over the years, we have understood that imported cargo created good jobs here in the United States and that exports provided farmers, miners, ranchers and refinery workers with overseas markets for their products....

After watching a film like "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" or even "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," you might assume a 19th century sailor's life was all about having sword fights, searching for treasure and getting to wear a really cool eye-patch. According to Ivan Stoner, however, the life of a sailor 200 years ago consisted mostly of, well ... work. "In many ways it was not a particularly good life," says Stoner.

Major shipping lines said Friday that they had reached a deal with the dockworkers union that would allow the hiring of up to 2,000 nonunion workers to ease congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The pact between the Pacific Maritime Assn., which represents the lines, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Locals 13 and 63, stills needs to be ratified by the roughly 11,000 union members at West Coast ports, the PMA said.

Like her father and grandfather before her, 30-year-old Emilei Noceti thought she would spend her career at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as a longshoreman, lashing down cargo and driving utility trucks through the smell of diesel fumes.