The work is hard, dangerous and highly structured: A "gear man" positions an array of cables, hooks and tools around the one-ton-plus containers. Meanwhile, members of the "lashing crew" climb aboard the Mayaguez and remove the pins that bolt the containers together in stacks of four. A crane operator sitting in a windowed bucket atop a towering rig then plucks a container off the ship's deck and lowers it onto a flatbed truck waiting below.
A few yards down the dock, similar crews conduct the process in reverse, unhooking a container bound for Puerto Rico from a truck so the crane can deposit it onto the ship. A dock "header" in a brilliant yellow safety vest and hat uses a fluorescent-colored wand to conduct the symphony of workers, containers, crane and trucks.
Standing amid the incessant clanging of metal containers and the roar of diesel engines is yet another worker called a "checker." With a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other, he records the identification numbers stenciled on the back of each container as it passes.
Like the others, the checker wears a hardhat and orange vest. And like them, he's an ILA member.
But that's where the similarities end. The crane operators, gear men, lashing crew, headers and truck drivers are all African-American and belong to ILA Local 1408, whose 1,100 members are almost exclusively black. The checkers, however, belong to ILA Local 1593, where all but one of its 140 members are white.
The racial gap between the two locals has quietly survived changes that have broken down similar divisions at most U.S. workplaces -- and most U.S. ports. There's never been a complaint or lawsuit filed over it, say labor lawyers and union officials, who insist that neither union hall discriminates based on race or gender: For $1,500, anyone can join Local 1408; for Local 1593, it costs $1,800. "I've never known them to discriminate," says Lacy Mahon, a long-time Jacksonville labor lawyer who first represented Local 1408 in 1960. "It never came up."
As for the question of political correctness, members of both locals just shrug. "It's just something we inherited," says Jess R. Babich, president of the clerks and checkers Local 1593, whose father-in-law once presided over the local.
Understanding Jacksonville's peculiar institution involves a history lesson: Before containers and cranes mechanized dock work in the early 1960s, cargo such as coffee and bananas coming through the port of Jacksonville had to be loaded and unloaded by hand -- sack by sack, stalk by stalk.
Those backbreaking jobs typically went to those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In big cities such as Boston and New York City, that meant dockworkers typically were recent immigrants from Ireland and Italy. In southeastern U.S. ports, such as Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, longshoremen typically were African-Americans.
Eric Arnesen, an associate professor of history and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has studied the early years of the ILA in southern ports. "By and large," he says, "the more skilled and better-paid jobs were held by whites, and the longshore jobs, the jobs that required strong backs and muscles, were held by blacks."
In Jacksonville, longshoremen organized the two locals under the ILA banner in 1936, when both law and custom dictated segregation.
Over time, the containerization of ocean-going freight reduced the overall number of jobs. But the two-local system continued to serve the needs of each local's leadership well enough that neither local ever challenged the dual structure.
Both locals enjoyed the union's traditional protection to its members. Meanwhile, the whites who ran Local 1593 kept control of the few remaining higher-skilled jobs; Local 1408, for its part, remained one of the few consistent sources of good-paying, semi-skilled jobs for Jacksonville's African-American community. And the leaders of Local 1408 remained powerful because they controlled who got those jobs.
Over the years, ILA 1408 has been a potent political and social force in the city, and an aggressive defender of its turf. During one dockworkers' strike in the early 1970s, former ILA Local 1408 President Landon Williams pulled a pistol and squeezed off several rounds in the direction of a non-union cargo ship crewmember attempting to untie his vessel from the wharf -- a task restricted to ILA workers.
Over time, all the ILA jobs have offered good benefits and pay, and there's been little difference between the hourly wages of white checkers and black dockworkers, further discouraging any change in the status quo.
Hourly base pay for a Jacksonville ILA longshoreman working a container ship like the Mayaguez is $23. Crane operators get an additional 50 cents an hour. The "headers" who direct traffic on the ground get an additional $1 per hour.
By comparison, checkers and clerks get anywhere from 35 cents-an-hour to $1.50 an-hour extra, depending on the job; clerical and accounting-related jobs pay more than checker positions. All ILA members working the docks get time-and-a-half pay for any hours worked before 7 a.m. or after 5 p.m., regardless of how many hours they've worked in a given day or week.
In addition, all ILA members who work at least 700 hours a year get an annual bonus from the "container royalty fund." As containerization displaced many waterfront jobs in the mid-1960s, shipping companies agreed to put $3 into the fund for each ton of containerized cargo that moves across the docks. The money is divvied up at the end of the year; some ILA workers get as much as $10,000 a year in bonuses.
Union officials profess to be colorblind when looking at the racially divided locals. "We're all longshoremen," says Charles F. Spencer, president of Local 1408. Babich, sitting next to Spencer during a recent interview while the two attended an ILA convention in Orlando, agreed. "We work hand-in-hand," he says with a smile. Both men are vice presidents of the ILA South Atlantic and Gulfcoast District. "When Charles does something wrong, I'll slap him," says Babich. "And when I do something wrong, he'll slap me."
For the moment, events are conspiring to keep union blood thick. Just down the wharf from where the ILA crews are loading and unloading the Mayaguez floats a container ship owned by a small, new shipping line called Sea Star Line.
Sea Star operates two vessels between Jacksonville and Puerto Rico, and uses non-ILA workers. Spencer and Babich say it's work that ILA workers should be handling, and they'll be pursuing the business on behalf of their members.
Elsewhere, another maritime union -- the Seafarer's International Union, or SIU -- has been nibbling into business in Jacksonville long held by the ILA clerks and checkers locals. The dockworkers from the divided locals will help their colleagues any way they can, says George Spencer, Local 1408's secretary-treasurer and Charles' brother. "We'll stick together," says George Spencer.