Port and Labor Split on NAFTA : Trade: Harbor officials envision significant growth in import-export volume, with a positive effect on employment. Union officials fear that lucrative jobs will be among the exports to Mexico.

Well before President Clinton kicked off his campaign for the North American Free Trade Agreement this week, local opponents picked Los Angeles Harbor as the starting point for their drive to defeat the pact.

Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Marina del Rey), a Democrat whose coastal district stretches to San Pedro, announced in a rally at Ports O’ Call last month that she opposes the agreement. Accompanying her was Los Angeles City Councilman Rudy Svorinich of San Pedro.

Port executives say NAFTA opponents chose the wrong backdrop. The trade pact, they say, would provide a big boost to the Port of Los Angeles, the West Coast’s busiest trading hub.

“You’ve got to look at the pact from a marketing standpoint-- as a non-competitive, pure shipping issue,” said Al Fierstine, the port’s director of marketing. “Regardless of what the politicians say it will do, it (will bring) good new business.”

Longshoremen’s union leaders do not share that optimism. Some of them fear NAFTA would allow shipping companies to shift to Mexico high-paying clerical jobs now based at the port.

But port executives insist that NAFTA will spur the harbor’s already fast-growing trade with Mexico. And that, they say, would benefit local transportation businesses such as freight-forwarding companies and trucking firms, as well as their suppliers.

Said Fierstine: “It will have a ripple effect.”

Harbor officials base their optimism on a recent surge in port business that they say is the direct result of lowered trade barriers with Mexico.

Since the mid-1980s, when Mexico started to dramatically reduce tariffs and subsidies on a variety of goods, Southern California’s exports to Mexico jumped, from $1.6 billion in 1986 to almost $5 billion in 1992, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

Imports, meanwhile, grew at a slightly slower pace, from $1.9 billion in 1986 to $4.9 billion last year.

In one year alone, the port saw its revenue from wharf and dock fees related to Mexican trade climb from $2.5 million in 1991 to $8.8 million last year. Equal, if not greater, jumps could be expected in the years after NAFTA is approved, Fierstine said.

The agreement, which will lift tariffs on goods traded between the U.S., Canada and Mexico over a 15-year period, “will formalize what is already happening,” Fierstine said. “What it means is the growth will be at a faster pace than it is today.”

But Fierstine, who helped the port open a Mexico City office in July, 1992, is looking for NAFTA to help tap Latin American markets as well.

“We’re already dealing with Latin American countries,” he said. Last year, trade with Peru, Chile and Argentina generated $4.3 million in revenues for the port, up from $3.2 million in 1991.

The pact would also prompt expanded trade with Asian countries, supporters say. Because the Port of Los Angeles is larger and better-equipped than any of Mexico’s West Coast ports, officials say, much of the trade between Asia and Mexico will go through the Port of Los Angeles. Cargo would cross the Pacific on large ships and move to and from Mexico by truck, train or smaller vessels.

“Mexico’s port infrastructure is pretty woebegone,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “It’s not world class. The idea (for the shipping firms) is that you go to the harbor that gives you the most bang for your buck.”

Port officials have made no estimates of job growth from the pact, though they say the harbor will get its share of the projected 30,000 to 75,000 new jobs that economists estimate will come to Southern California.

According to a U.S. Department of Commerce study, NAFTA would generate new jobs in electronics engineering, computers, communications, rubber and plastics, business, and financial services and transportation.

Such forecasts fail to comfort the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, which represents about 3,700 dock workers, marine clerks, foremen and ship scalers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Under NAFTA, transportation companies could set up their main offices across the border, taking computer and other clerical work with them, said David Miller, president of the Marine Clerks Local 63 in Wilmington, which is part of the longshoremen’s union.

Says Miller, who fears NAFTA could erase one-third of the 750 jobs in his local: “It’s obvious that a lot of our work will move off and never come back.”

Union officials say that even if NAFTA does not eliminate jobs, they still oppose the pact because they fear it will lead to a weakening of environmental standards and workplace conditions generally in the United States.

“The big hits (in the port) will be because of technology” and not NAFTA, said George Kuvakas, secretary treasurer of Walking Bosses Local 94, a longshoremen’s local that has about 200 members. “But you have to look at the big picture.”

Port executives strongly disagree. They say that with NAFTA funneling more trade through Los Angeles Harbor, port workers will only benefit.