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OAKLAND (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― West Coast cargo traffic came to a halt Thursday as port workers in San Francisco, Oakland and other cities ditched work to commemorate May Day and call on the U.S. to end the war in Iraq.

About 25,000 dockworkers at 29 ports in California, Oregon and Washington state did not show up for their day shifts, leaving ships and truck drivers idle at ports from Long Beach to Seattle, Pacific Maritime Association spokesman Steve Getzug said.

Workers stayed off the job for about 10 hours before returning for evening shifts.

Port of Oakland spokeswoman Marilyn Sandifur said workers there had returned for the next shift that began at 5 p.m.

But she said the absence of dockworkers during the day had halted the movement of cargo on and off ships.

"There was insufficient labor at the marine terminals to conduct normal cargo operations, so it was an unusually light day today," Sandifur said. "There wasn't any loading or offloading of cargo."

Outside, protesters had walked picket lines to convince truckers to take part in the work action.

Alfredo Jack, a Port of Oakland longshoreman from East Palo Alto, said union members' decision to stay off the job on May Day — an international day of labor solidarity — was part of a long tradition of protest among San Francisco Bay Area dockworkers.

Longshore workers at some of the West Coast ports participated in rallies with other anti-war protesters, while a number of workers chose to make their statement simply by taking the day off.

In San Francisco, dockworkers were among nearly 1,000 protesters who staged a peaceful march on the waterfront, some carrying signs that proclaimed the day a "No Peace, No Work Holiday."

"This war is like all wars," Robert Cavalli, president of dockworkers union Local 34 said at a rally after the march. "It kills the sons and daughters of workers."

The West Coast ports are the nation's principal gateway for cargo container traffic from the Far East, handling about 40 percent of the nation's cargo.

During a typical day shift, about 10,000 cargo containers are loaded and unloaded from ships coastwide, Getzug said.

Longshore workers handle everything from operating cranes at port marine terminals to clerical work like coordinating truck cargo deliveries. But the National Retail Federation said shippers and exporters expected no significant, long-term disruptions from the walkout.

Sandifur speculated that because the walkout by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union was announced several months ago and was highly publicized, companies adjusted their shipping schedules.

She said a large number of ships sailed late Wednesday 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.

"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, but 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 ports 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.

Taylor said once longshore workers returned to work, it would take just a day or two for marine terminal operations to return to normal.

Union members voted during a caucus in February of this year to take May 1 off to protest the war in Iraq. 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 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.

"It is clear to us that the ILWU will say one thing and do another," Getzug said.

"While they maintained that any protest would be voluntary, there was evidence to suggest that they encouraged their workers to stay away from their jobs. ... We are severely disappointed that the ILWU leadership failed to keep its end of the bargain."

In a statement Thursday, the union defended its members' right to take off work to protest the U.S. war in Iraq.

"Big foreign corporations that control global shipping aren't loyal or accountable to any country," said Bob McEllrath, the ILWU's international president. "But longshore workers are different. We're loyal to America, and we won't stand by while our country, our troops, and our economy are destroyed by a war."

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.

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