OAKLAND, Calif. -- The failure of Bay Area longshore workers to report to work Thursday to protest the United States' war in Iraq has had a relatively minimal impact at the Port of Oakland, according to a port spokeswoman and an executive of a company that does business there.

Port of Oakland spokeswoman Marilyn Sandifur said, "There was insufficient labor to conduct normal cargo operations, but it was an unusually light day.

Sandifur said only one ship is coming into the port Thursday. On a normal day, three to five ships come in and on busy days as many as seven ships come to Oakland, she said.

Sandifur speculated that because the walkout by 25,000 dockworkers belonging to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union throughout the West Coast was announced several months ago and was highly publicized, companies may have adjusted their shipping schedules.

She said a large number of ships sailed late Wednesday or early Thursday before the walkout started.

Brandon Taylor, the logistics operations manager for GSC Logistics, a warehousing, distribution and transportation company at the Port of Oakland, said, "We didn't experience too much disruption," in part because his company planned ahead and shipped containers out of the port earlier this week.

Taylor said, "This is a slow time of the year, so this was a good time for them (the longshore workers) to try to pull this off."

Taylor said that if a similar job action were to occur in September or October, which are busier months, it could be "devastating to the economy" nationally.

Sandifur said John Martin & Associates, an economic consulting firm based in Pennsylvania, has calculated that $1.2 trillion in business activity is generated through the West Coast's ports, which represents 10 percent of the nation's gross national product.

Sandifur said that although shipping operations at the port weren't heavily impacted by the job action, the action had a ripple effect because truckers weren't allowed to drop off or pick up materials at the port.

She said rail terminals at the port were open and operating but activity was lighter than normal because there wasn't marine terminal activity.

Taylor said that if longshore workers return to work for the second shift later Thursday, as they have said they will do, it would take just a day or two for marine terminal operations to return to normal.

Outside, protesters walked picket lines to convince truckers to take part in the work action. The truckers were not being blocked from entering the facilities.

Union members voted during a caucus in February to take May 1 off to protest the war. Employers raised objections with an arbitrator, who ruled last week that such a unilateral work stoppage would violate terms of the longshore workers' contract.

Despite that decision, word continued to spread on the Internet in recent days of a May 1 walkout by longshore workers.

Employers went back to the arbitrator on Wednesday, armed with accounts of dockworkers at ports in Oakland, Seattle and elsewhere telling supervisors they would not be showing up to work.

Arbitrator John Kagel ruled again in favor of the employers and ordered the union to tell members to show up for work.

Getzug declined to speculate how the walkout might affect ongoing labor contract talks, which began in March. The current six-year contract expires on July 1.

The union has maintained its members' decision to walk off the job was not related to the labor talks.

In 2002, longshore workers across the West Coast were locked out for 10 days over a contract dispute. The shutdown cost the nation's economy an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion a day.