The article below about TWIC card problems appeared in the May issue of The Dispatcher. To learn more, read the 'White Paper' prepared by ILWU's Longshore Division.

After working 36 years on the docks without any problems, Local 40 Marine Clerk Jim Hennessey didn’t expect any trouble when he drove downtown to apply for his Transport Worker Identification Card (TWIC) in January of 2008. After all, he was applying much earlier than most of his co-workers, and while Jim wasn’t thrilled about paying the $132.50 application fee, he knew that there wasn’t much choice because TWIC cards would soon become mandatory for all longshore workers. So Jim filled-out the application, forked over his money, and waited. After six weeks he figured the card would be ready, so he called the TWIC staff who told him to come down to the office.

“When I got to the TWIC office, they told me there’d been a mistake, and my card wasn’t ready after all,” said Jim.  So he kept waiting, calling the TWIC office, and returning nearly a dozen times in 2008, but by the end of the year he still didn’t have a card.

And fifteen frustrating months later, Jim still had no TWIC card.

“The only part that went smoothly for me was paying the hundred and thirty bucks that they took up front; it was all downhill from there,” said Jim.

Over a year later, with the February 28, 2009 compliance deadline looming for Jim and other longshore workers in Portland who were told that they couldn’t work without a TWIC card, Jim decided to call the officers at Local 40 to tell them about his situation.

“Martha Hendricks and Dawn Des Brisay at Local 40 got on it immediately and were like pit bulls when they heard what was happening,” said Jim.

Low-wage, non-union temps at TWIC offices

When Hendricks and Des Brisay contacted the local TWIC office for an explanation, they didn’t get very far. The TWIC office in Portland, like others around the country, aren’t run by government employees – they’re staffed by temporary workers who get no benefits and owe their jobs to a labor subcontractor.

“One day I was visiting the TWIC office to help Jim when I overheard one of the temp workers tell someone how excited they were to find another job that would provide some benefits, so I know the workers weren’t being treated very well, and there’s definitely no union for workers in the TWIC office,” said Des Brisay.

Contracting out to powerful corporations

The office staffing was just one symptom of problems caused by Congress and the Bush administration that allowed private contractors – instead of government workers with union contracts –to operate the TWIC program.  The deal has been lucrative for the private contracts, with more than one million workers already enrolled, and expansion plans that will eventually require TWIC cards for employees at airlines, railroads, and other industries. The main contractor is Lockheed-Martin, one of the world’s largest defense contractors with a history of cost-overruns, fraud, and executives who served time in prison for white-collar crime. On the surface, Lockheed-Martin was selected through a competitive bidding process, but the company reported spending $16 million for lobbying in 2008 to make friends and buy influence.

Lockheed-Martin doesn’t handle much of the actual program work at TWIC; that’s been subcontracted to DeloitteConsulting, part of a multi-national corporation that’s best known for accounting and tax work.  In April 2009, Deloitte announced that they paid millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit involving their firm in a massive fraud scheme that’s been characterized as “the largest criminal inquiry into abusive tax shelters in the history of the United States.”

But Deloitte Consulting doesn’t actually employ the hundreds of field staff who work at the TWIC office in Portland and elsewhere around the country. Deloitte subcontracts with Kelly Government Services, part of the firm once known as “Kelly Girl” that was described in a recent university study as one of the leading firms in the temporary employment industry that has “deliberately and strenuously worked against government regulators, unions and public opinion to divest business of its investment in permanent employees. In doing so, it has helped change the very meaning of work in America, undermining employment standards for all workers."

Deloitte officials show little respect for the temp workers hired by Kelly. A Deloitte company official told ILWU’s Coast Committee that longshore workers couldn’t use cash to pay for their TWIC cards “because we don’t trust the office workers not to steal the money.”

Ultimate responsibility for the TWIC program rests with Congress, which approved the scheme as part of the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 following the 9/11 attack, when concerns about the Constitution and workers’ rights took a backseat to fears about terrorism, sleeper cells, dirty bombs, and other nightmare scenarios that the Bush administration used to pass the new Maritime Act, USA Patriot Act, and Homeland Security Act.

By 2009, Jim still had no card and only a receipt showing that he had applied twelve months earlier. The receipt allowed him and other longshore workers to remain on the docks until March 27, 2009, when new rules prevented him from working without a card and his receipt would no longer be accepted. In fact, Coast Guard rules allow companies to escort longshore workers through security so they can work on the docks without a TWIC card, but most are refusing to honor that provision and have enacted security plans that single-out longshore workers by denying them escort services that are available to other workers.

With time running out, Local 40 contacted Representative Peter DeFazio’s office for help, and his staff expected the matter could be resolved quickly with a few phone calls to the federal Transportation Security Agency (TSA) that oversees the program and the private contractors who run it. After calling federal agencies for three days, DeFazio’s office was unable to make any progress.

            Fortunately, officials from ILWU’s Coast Committee were meeting in Washington, D.C. during the first week in April to work on TWIC problems and other priorities.  ILWU’s Legislative Director Lindsay McLaughlin arranged for Coast officials to meet with key legislators including Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka from Hawaii, Representatives Laura Richardson (CA), and Neal Abercombie (HI). A breakfast meeting with Representative Loretta Sanchez (CA) who chairs the House Subcommittee on Maritime Security, resulted in her direct intervention with the Department of Homeland Security.

But by then, time had run out for Jim, who was now unable to work without a TWIC card. Suddenly however, due to Congressional pressure, TSA officials became somewhat more responsive and on April 10 Jim was notified that his card was finally ready at the Portland TWIC office.

After fifteen months of waiting, there was no apology from Lockheed-Martin or Deloitte. And none of the PMA member-companies came forward with a check to compensate Jim for the 15 days that he was denied work because PMA-member terminal operators refused to escort him through security to the docks, as they did for some truckers and other employees who needed access. 

A conviction can cost you your job

If the current system isn’t changed, some workers may never get a TWIC card, or be forced to wait to get one. That’s because the law says cards will be denied to workers who are considered to be “security risks” because they were once convicted of a serious crime – even if they have served their time and now have clean records. Workers without immigration papers are also ineligible to get a TWIC card, a requirement that has impacted some ILWU members and forced thousands of port truckers to lose their jobs.

“Our first effort to try and deal with this problem was by reducing the list of crimes that could exclude someone from getting a card, said Ray Ortiz, Jr., of the Coast Committee. “For example, at one point they wanted to exclude anyone who’d been convicted of possessing a controlled substance, which was extreme, so we were able to get rid of that one, but we weren’t happy with the final list of crimes that is still too long,”

 “When we couldn’t get Congress to cut the number of crimes that could exclude workers from getting a TWIC card, we pushed hard to protect members by strengthening their right to appeal with a guarantee of due process and a fair hearing,” said Leal Sundet of the Coast Committee

Those appeal provisions have already helped workers get cards who were initially excluded, and others are just beginning to use the appeal process. “We need to keep on top of Congress, TSA officials, and the Coast Guard to make sure people are getting fair hearings and have a chance to show that they’re not security risks,” said Sundet. To date, no ILWU member has lost their appeal.

              “It’s totally wrong to keep punishing workers who made a mistake, paid their debt to society, and now are losing their jobs and having their lives destroyed,” said Sundet.

Was Jim’s case exceptional or a sentinel event?

The TSA says that Jim Hennessey’s case is exceptional, and that nearly 90% of TWIC applicants get their cards in a few weeks, with only 3 or 4% experiencing problems.  But with more than a million applicants applying from a variety of industries,that could mean 30,000 or 40,000 workers and their families could have trouble with TWIC.

Agency officials note that they’re only implementing a law passed by Congress and the Bush Administration, who bear primary responsibility for TWIC and other similar measures enacted after 9/11.

One point seems clear:  More than a million TWIC applications have now been processed without a single “terrorist” having been discovered at the ports.

“It’s time for Congress to face the fact that the TWIC program has nothing to do with improving security at the ports, said Coast Committeeman Leal Sundet.  “TWIC was a political response to the 9/11 attacks that fails to address the fundamental problem of cargo integrity. Credentialing longshore workers at a modern container terminal has zero correlation with port security because all cargo is locked securely in a box that isn’t accessible to workers. Any serious port security plan would require the inspection of goods moving in and out of the ports, and companies don’t want that because it involves time and money – which are apparently more important to them than real security measures.”