2-18-05

Beloved Foreman Dies on the Docks
Death of Matt Petrasich Again Highlights Danger of Dockwork
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

     The Petrasich family and the Local 94 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) are mourning the loss of Matt Petrasich, a 63 year old longshore foreman of Rancho Palos Verdes to an accident on January 31 at the Port of Los Angeles. On the same day, in an unrelated accident, Cody Bates another foreman, was injured. He was released from the hospital the same day. The accidents, once again, throw into sharp relief the danger involved in working on the docks.
     “What a terrible day,” said Danny Miranda, President of ILWU Local 94. “One brother is deceased and another has his leg mangled. Absolutely terrible.”
     “Everybody on this waterfront is grieving,” he added. “He was loved by a lot of people. Not one person could ever say a bad thing about him.”
     Petrasich, a “hatch boss,” was supervising a work crew unloading cargo aboard the Panamanian-flagged container ship, the Ever Deluxe, at the Evergreen terminal. The details of his death are unclear and are being investigated by Cal-OSHA and federal OSHA officials. His body was discovered on top of a cargo container onboard ship by a crane operator at 9 a.m., according to the ILWU.
     Bates was working at the APL terminal when he suffered serious injuries to his leg after being struck by a forklift. He was hospitalized and released the same day.
     Petrasich was “doing more than he should” due to cutbacks on foremen, Miranda said immediately after the accident.
     “He was really well liked and well respected by everyone, including both the older workers and the younger workers. He could relate to them all,” Miranda said, in a later interview. “He’s done all three different kinds of work that’s done here on the docks.”
     “I worked at Evergreen with him,” Miranda explained. He chose to work with Petrasich and his close friends. “They all got over 35 years. I wanted to learn. You learn from them, learn everything. That’s just how he was.”
     But he wasn’t just generous with his knowledge and experience.
     “If you went into a restaurant the first thing he would do was make sure you would have something to eat and drink. You could be an absolute stranger, the first thing he would do was make sure you would have something to drink,” Miranda recalled.
     What’s more, “He didn’t inherit anything. He worked for everything he had,” Miranda stressed. “Everybody knew he started as a poor Yugoslavian kid out of Pedro. He did well for himself.”
     “Kume” was his nickname, Miranda explained. “It’s a word, like ‘my friend’ that’s how he would call you, and you would call him back.”
     As he was in life, it was reflected after his death.
     At his funeral, “The procession had to be over a mile long or more,” Miranda reflected. “When the father was done at the burial site, cars were still arriving to get in.”
     “It’s really a tragedy that happened to him,” Miranda concluded, “You would think he would be the last person that would happened to because he was so careful.”
     “We need to set a new standard for safety in this port,” said David Arian, president of ILWU Local 13.
     Yet, alongside this need stands the day-to-day, month-to-month process of overseeing safety. Deaths are, fortunately, “an anomaly,” notes Local 13 Health Benefits Officer David Beeman, who serves as Chair of the Joint Port Accident Prevention Committee. There were 1124 accidents reported locally for 2003, down just a hair to 1119 in 2004. Tracking and responding to them is key to preventing future deaths.