ILWU History - 5 Dockworkers Dead

5 Dockworkers Dead
In the last six months there have been five fatalities among International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) waterfront workers, each more horrific than the last.

On Sept. 3 ILWU Local 26 watchman Rudy Acosta was run over and killed by a top handler at the Pacific Container Terminal operated by SSA in Long Beach

On July 23 Richie Lopez, Jr. of ILWU Local 46 in Port Hueneme was run over by a heavy forklift.

On June 1 ILWU Local 14 member Dick Peters was checking the hatches of a ship being loaded in the Port of Eureka . No one saw what happened, but apparently the ship-board gantry crane swung and crushed Peters against the ship itself.

On March 15, Mario Gonzalez, a member of ILWU Local 26, was operating a huge mill that shreds cars into scrap metal at Hugo Neu-Pr ole rs’ facility at the Port of Los Angeles . The machine jammed and Gonzalez went in to fix it. But the hydraulic-powered, several-ton door closed on his chest, killing him.

A day earlier on March 14 foreman John Prohoroff of ILWU Local 94 was routinely preparing a ship to be worked at SSA’s Long Beach terminal. The line on one of the ship’s cranes broke, dropping a 3,000-pound metal ring 30 feet and hitting Prohoroff. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

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