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Scheme would call for background checks on all dockworkers, truckers

LOS ANGELES - 04/27/06 - Reactions along the California waterfront are mixed to the Bush Administration proposal to conduct background checks on an estimated 400,000 port workers nationwide to ensure they do not pose a terrorist threat.

Basically, the plan - the Transportation Worker Identification Credential program - calls for the federal government to issue tamper-proof identification cards to truckers hauling cargo in and out of terminal facilities, railroad workers, and the longshoremen who load and unload ships dockside after a thorough background check of every individual.

The names of truckers, rail workers, and longshoremen who currently have almost unrestricted access to port facilities would be matched against government terror watch lists and immigration databases, but, scrutiny will not immediately include a criminal background check for workers, "although that might happen in the future," according to sources at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) - not the Federal Bureau of Investigation - would conduct the background checks utilizing several information databases, they said.

The ID plan - three years in the making - would bar anyone who is on a terror watch list, entered the country illegally, or has certain criminal convictions.
 
Among the disqualifying crimes would be offenses related to espionage, terrorism, explosives or "a transportation security incident," and, in some cases, workers could be excluded for assault with intent to murder, kidnapping, rape, drug offenses, extortion, robbery and fraud.

Stephanie Williams, vice president of the Sacramento-headquartered California Trucking Association, told the media that she supports background checks, but "only if they are quick and don't interfere with the work" of the nearly 12,000 truckers that serve California's deep-water ports.

"If it take four months to get back the information and the driver can't drive in the meantime, then we have a problem," she said.

Williams' qualified support for the plan was countered by Steve Stallone, spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), who said the ID card scheme "looks a lot like harassment of the workers."

"It seems to us that the biggest security threat is coming from the outside, and not from the workers who live and work in those communities," said Stallone, whose union represents about 14,000 longshoremen and clerks at ports from Seattle to San Diego.

The government, he said, "should intensify its scrutiny of shipping containers."

The Bush Administration has come under heavy fire over the past several months for what its political opponents say is the White House's failure to secure the nation's ports from terrorist attack, namely implementation of a plan to screen every ocean container moving in to or out of the US.   

At a recent new conference earlier, Congressional Democrats pushed for legislation by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., which would provide $185 million more in funding for port security as part of a massive spending bill the Senate is considering.

That legislation also would require that the DHS submit a plan to Congress laying out how it would accomplish 100% scanning of all cargo containers within five years.

Homeland Security treats port security like a "neglected stepchild," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York). 

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff reportedly bristled at Schumer's suggestion that port security is not a priority of the Bush Administration.

He said the administration has proposed up to $9 billion in spending to protect ports through the US Coast Guard and US Customs and Border Protection, and state grants.

Plans are in place to submit two-thirds of all containers at US ports to random radiation screening for nuclear materials by the year's end, while 80% percent of containers entering the US originating at foreign ports with rigorous inspection standards mandated by the US government's Container Security Initiative, he said.

But Chertoff said it was impossible to physically inspect every single cargo container without snarling port commerce.

"To call for all physical inspection of every container is like saying were going to strip search everybody who gets on an airplane. In theory, that would make us safe, but I think that it would destroy the airline industry," he said.

"The openness of our ports ... is one of the tremendous marks of success in this global economy, but it also provides an opportunity for terror," said Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California), who is sponsoring port security legislation with fellow Californian, Rep. Jane Harman.

"We ought to limit [access] to people who are here legally. We ought to limit it to people who would not jeopardize that security," he said.

California is home to three of the nation's busiest container ports - Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland - which, combined, handled more than 16 million inbound and outbound containers in 2005.

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