Port and Longshore Workers

If you were injured working the docks at Los Angeles or Long Beach, the first question is not what your claim is worth. It is which law covers you — because the answer can change the value of your case by a great deal.

The federal Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act pays more than California workers' compensation. Substantially more.

Higher weekly maximum. No 104-week cap on temporary disability. No apportionment to pre-existing conditions. Free choice of physician. No utilization review and no IMR. And when the employer denies the claim and you win, the employer pays your attorney's fees rather than you paying them out of your recovery.

And California is a concurrent jurisdiction state — meaning that for many port workers, the two systems overlap rather than compete.

Side by side

Two of those rows matter more than the rest.

No 104-week cap. A California worker with a serious injury runs out of wage replacement after two years whether or not they can work. Under the federal act, temporary disability continues while the disability continues.

No apportionment. A 55-year-old lasher with a rotator cuff tear and degenerative change gets his California permanent disability reduced — often 40% or more — for the degeneration. Under the federal act, that reduction does not happen. The employer takes the worker as it found him.

Which system covers you

Federal coverage requires both of two tests.

Situs — where you were hurt. On the navigable waters of the United States, including any adjoining pier, wharf, dry dock, terminal, or other adjoining area customarily used for loading, unloading, repairing, dismantling, or building a vessel. The marine terminal counts.

Status — what you do. Engaged in maritime employment, including longshoring operations, ship repair, shipbuilding, and ship-breaking. Status looks at your overall duties, not what you happened to be doing at the moment you were hurt. A worker who spends part of his time in covered activity generally has status.

How that maps to the San Pedro Bay complex:

Also excluded from federal coverage and left to California: office and clerical staff, data processing, restaurant and retail employees, certain vendors temporarily on the premises, and aquaculture workers.

Concurrent jurisdiction — why you may not have to choose

The Supreme Court settled this in Sun Ship, Inc. v. Pennsylvania (1980): the federal act "does not supplant state workers' compensation laws, but supplements them." The 1972 amendments extending federal coverage landward did not preempt state coverage.

California is a concurrent state. Florida, Texas, Washington and Ohio have eliminated concurrency; California has not.

You cannot recover twice for the same element of loss — the second forum credits what the first paid. But because the two systems measure permanent disability in structurally different ways — federal scheduled awards versus California's rating with apportionment — a worker can frequently net more from the pair than from either alone.

And California aggregates concurrent employment, where the federal act generally does not. For a worker with a second job, that alone can make the California claim worth pursuing alongside the federal one.

This analysis has to be done at the start, by someone who understands both systems. It is not something to discover after a settlement.

The work that causes the injuries

Lashing is the highest cumulative-trauma job on the docks. Lashing rods and turnbuckles are heavy, awkward gear, worked overhead and at deck level, in tight spaces with low headroom, in the dark, on wet steel. Federal OSHA guidance on lashing flags exactly the mechanisms: twisting at the waist, leaning over cables and rails, back strain from handling gear, and working in low light.

What it produces: shoulder impingement and rotator cuff tears from repetitive overhead extension and forceful pulling; lateral epicondylitis, carpal tunnel, and de Quervain's from gripping and twisting turnbuckles; lumbar disc disease from repeated trunk flexion and twist.

Crane and top-handler operators spend six to eight hours in sustained neck hyperflexion looking down through the cab floor, plus whole-body vibration and static seated posture — producing cervical disc disease, thoracic outlet syndrome, cervicogenic headache, and lumbar degeneration.

UTR and yard tractor drivers take whole-body vibration, repeated climbing in and out (knees, hips, ankles), and shoulder and wrist loading from fifth-wheel and landing-gear work.

Hearing loss from container impacts, reefer compressors, diesel yard equipment, and engine rooms. Under the federal act, hearing loss is a scheduled award of 200 weeks for binaural loss, and the audiogram itself starts the clock. This is a distinct claim, and it is missed constantly.

Knees from climbing container stacks, ship ladders, and chassis. Respiratory disease from diesel particulate — the port complex is the largest single source in the South Coast basin — plus bulk cargo dust and asbestos in older vessels and terminal buildings.

And the acute injuries: falls from height off catwalks, ladders, container stacks, and gangways; struck-by and crushed-by containers, chassis, top-handlers and lashing gear; mooring line snap-back; forklift and yard tractor rollovers; container off-gassing exposure.

The danger is documented

Federal researchers put the fatal injury rate in marine terminal and port operations at 15.9 per 100,000 workers per year — roughly five times the rate for the U.S. workforce as a whole. The nonfatal rate, 4,916 per 100,000, is nearly double the all-industry figure.

The San Pedro Bay complex has its own record. In June 2026, a hatch foreman fell roughly fifty feet through a gap in a catwalk perimeter aboard a vessel at APM Terminals Pier 400 and was pronounced dead on scene. Recent years have also seen a fatal forklift overturn on Terminal Island, a fifty-foot fall by a ship repairman, a worker crushed by metal at Pier 400, and a fatal tire explosion at Fenix Marine Services.

Cal/OSHA has been operating with a roughly 32% vacancy rate and conducted on-site inspections for only about 17% of validated complaints in a recent fiscal year.

Getting your wage rate right

The dispatch hall is the core problem. Casuals, Class B, and Class A longshoremen are dispatched job to job, and weekly earnings swing enormously. The simple wage formula does not apply — you are in the earning-capacity provisions in both systems, and that is where the fight is.

Registration status is earning capacity. A casual moving to Class B, or Class B to Class A, has a scheduled and reasonably anticipated increase in earnings. In both systems, that increase belongs in the calculation. Carriers routinely ignore it.

Skill differentials, penalty rates, night, weekend and holiday premiums, and guaranteed annual income payments under the coast contract all count.

And know who your employer actually is. For registered longshore labor, the employer of record is the Pacific Maritime Association, not the terminal operator whose name is on the gate.

If you were told you are an owner-operator

Port drayage has been the center of California misclassification enforcement for fifteen years. Port truckers have been awarded roughly $30 million in misclassification and wage-theft judgments and settlements.

A driver who leases his truck from the carrier, is dispatched exclusively by that carrier, and cannot refuse loads is very likely an employee — and therefore covered by workers' compensation, whatever the paperwork says. California's ABC test applies to drayage, and the industry's challenge to it failed.

If you were hurt and told you are not covered because you are a contractor: file the claim anyway. Where the carrier has no coverage, the Uninsured Employers Benefits Trust Fund and a civil action with a presumption of negligence are both available. And if you were injured on the terminal, the federal question is live too.

Frequently asked questions

General information about California and federal law, not legal advice about your case. Coverage under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act is fact-specific.