About 75 ILWU brothers and sisters turned out for a rally at the gates of the LAXT terminal last week to protest what they say is a terrible safety record at the coal and petroleum coke facility. The union has been negotiating since April with Savage Pacific, which operates the backlands area of the terminal under contract to LAXT. The union represents about 25 Savage Pacific workers. The union cited a 1998 accident at the plant which left one worker dead and another paralyzed. And they said a bulldozer operator narrowly escaped injury last month when the coke pile collapsed under his dozer sending it nose down into a deep hole. Company executives denied that the terminal was unsafe. The 1998 accident was the failure of a new piece of equipment and did not represent a failure in the company’s operational safety program. They are still looking into ways to prevent a reoccurrence of last month’s mishap, they said.
