PHOTO BY ANTHONY PLASCENCIA, VENTURA COUNTY STAR // BUY THIS PHOTO
ABOVE: Janet Ritza looks out from the cab of a top handler as trucks line up with empty shipping containers for her to stack. ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR
PHOTO BY ANTHONY PLASCENCIA, VENTURA COUNTY STAR
ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Ritza operates a top handler to stack empty shipping containers.
Janet Ritza sits in the cab of a whirley crane aboard a ship docked at the Port of Hueneme. She carefully maneuvers the crane to lift unwieldy metal containers weighing several tons onto the backs of trucks waiting on the docks below.
Watching her operate that massive machinery, you might never know she’s a woman, except that she might be wearing a pink hat.
Ritza, 55, prefers to be called a longshoreman when it comes to work. At home, however, she’s called “grandma” by her two grandsons, who love her chicken dumpling soup and have been taught to appreciate Brussels sprouts. Ritza is also a homebody who gardens and prides herself on finding deals at thrift stores.
“If it’s not on sale, we don’t buy it,” she says.
It’s that kind of nose-to-the-grindstone, shoulder-to-the-wheel determination that she’s also applied on the job for the past 33 years as she worked to become a certified crane operator, a job once reserved for men. Not only is Ritza certified to operate the whirley pedestal cranes on the ships, she’s also one of just three women certified to operate the Port of Hueneme’s computerized mobile crane, known as “the big blue.” Ritza is, however, the only one of the three who would speak about what it’s like to be a woman working cranes on the docks.
Some longshoremen still aren’t keen on having women around, but Ritza describes working at the Port of Hueneme as a “whole different world” than when she started in 1980. “Now we do have a lot of women,” she says.
Ritza started working at the port as a casual worker in an apprentice-type position and in 1992 was elevated to a fully-registered member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The casuals, as they’re known on the docks, aren’t union members.
PHOTO BY JOSEPH A. GARCIA, VENTURA COUNTY STAR
BELOW: Janet Ritza (center), who works as a longshoreman at the Port of Hueneme, spends some time with her grandchildren Mike (left) and John Kurten at her home. JOSEPH A. GARCIA/THE STAR
Members of the ILWU can earn an average of up to $162,878, and the average earnings for clerks and foremen was up to $217,786 in 2011, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, the largest shipping organization on the West Coast. ILWU benefits packages include health care coverage, a pension plan, a 401(k) savings plan, up to six weeks of vacation pay, and 13 paid holidays. The pension plan’s maximum yearly retirement benefit is $71,040, according to the PMA.
Ritza is one of 85 women who work on the docks, or 24 percent of the 354 dockworkers, according to the Oxnard Harbor District. Of the women, 60 are casuals and 25 are union dockworkers. While that may not seem like many, it’s on par with the goals women were striving for at the end of the 20th century, when women were still battling to gain better access to the coveted longshore work.
PHOTO BY ANTHONY PLASCENCIA, VENTURA COUNTY STAR
ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Siupolu Belaustegui, 56, of Oxnard, connects an empty shipping container to the utility tractor rig that she operates as dockworkers prepare for an incoming shipment of Chiquita bananas on Wednesday.$RETURN$$RETURN$
The integration of women at the Port of Hueneme
gradually happened, Ritza said, after a group of women in Los Angeles complained they were being unfairly denied positions and sued the ILWU and the PMA. They got a federal court in 1983 to issue hiring goals in what was known as the “Golden Decree,” named for one of the original plaintiffs, Deborah Golden. It required that membership in the marine clerk and longshore locals be 20 percent female.
A federal judge allowed the decree to lapse in 1999. Nonetheless, the women got their point across and demographics on the docks changed.
When longshoreman Jess Ramirez came to the port in 1986, six women were bona fide union members and it was clear they were not wanted on the docks, he said. He remembers telling them they’d better stick together.
“There was a lot of risk when women came in,” he said.
They’ve since assimilated, Ramirez said. “Women are no different than men. There are men who can do the job and men who can’t. Women are the same way. I make it a policy to get along with everyone.”
Still, Ramirez says he’s “old school” and does not want his four daughters working as longshoremen.
“We are definitely stronger than women and I’ve seen where women have gotten hurt on the job trying to lift heavy stuff and obviously they can’t do it,” he said. “That would be my only cautionary advice to women.”
Oxnard Harbor Commissioner Jason Hodge said technology has opened the work up to more women.
PHOTO BY ROB VARELA, VENTURA COUNTY STAR
LEFT: Ritza operates a pedestal crane to unload a container from a ship at the Port of Hueneme. ROB VARELA/THE STAR
“I think the entire shipping industry has seen a large influx of women from the dock levels up to management,” he said, pointing out that the Port of Hueneme now has its first woman at the helm, Executive Director Kristin Decas.
Ritza said it can indeed be dangerous on the docks, but said now that shipped goods are loaded on pallets workers are able to use forklifts so they don’t have to throw heavy boxes around.
Getting one of the longshore jobs isn’t as simple as applying, however.
Port Hueneme resident Monica Knox put her name in a recent lottery when 60 positions came open at the port. She said thousands of people applied for the jobs and her name wasn’t drawn.
“I’d give an arm and a leg to work down at the docks, even as a casual,” she said.
Ritza plans to spend around five more years working at the Port of Hueneme. When she retires she hopes she’ll have done her part to leave the place a little more welcoming to women.
“I’m happy to move on and let someone else take the cranes and all the work,” she said.
Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2013/feb/02/pioneer-hopes-shes-made-docks-a-better-place-for/#ixzz2Jnz2bl1C
- vcstar.com
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