Not in Oakland.

Long the most militant Occupy branch, Occupy Oakland has continued to push the movement’s campaign against the wealthiest 1 percent even after losing its perch in front of City Hall. It spearheaded a one-day action on Monday in which thousands of protesters rallied at West Coast ports from San Diego to Anchorage, effectively closing the Ports of Portland and Longview, Wash., and largely shutting the Port of Oakland.

In the process, Occupy Oakland has cast itself as the true champion of America’s workers, creating a potentially troublesome rift with the Occupy movement’s sometime allies in organized labor.

Several labor leaders criticized the plan to disrupt the ports, which cost many longshoremen and truck drivers a day’s pay. And union officials were irked by Occupy Oakland’s claim that it was advancing the cause of port workers even though several unions opposed the protests.

For example, several days before the disruptions, Robert McEllrath, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, issued a statement warning: “Support is one thing. Organizing from outside groups attempting to co-opt our struggle in order to advance a broader agenda is quite another.”

Organizers at Occupy Oakland shrugged off the criticism, saying many union leaders are afraid of bold action. The Occupy movement, they say, is doing more for working people than some unions and union leaders are.

“You can’t co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class,” said Boots Riley, 40, a rap musician with the Coup who helped plan the port shutdown. “The organizers of this movement are the working class, and these are issues that belong to the working class. No one has a copyright on working-class struggles.”

Occupy Oakland led the push to shut West Coast ports, holding conference calls two or three times a week with as many as 40 Occupy protesters in cities from San Diego to Seattle to plan and coordinate the disruptions. Occupy Oakland also sent $1,000 each to four other West Coast Occupy groups to help finance outreach and organizing for the port shutdowns.

The Oakland protesters also made regular visits to the longshore union’s hiring hall in San Francisco to gather support from rank-and-file workers. They printed 50,000 fliers about the protest and went to the Oakland port, one of the nation’s busiest, to distribute them and talk to nonunion truck drivers.

“The Occupy movement is a union for the 99 percent, and certainly for the 89 percent of working people who are not in unions,” said Barucha Peller, 28, an unemployed writer who helped plan and rally support for the port shutdown.

The Occupy strategists said they were carrying on the struggle of longshore workers at the Longview port, who have been pressing EGT, a terminal operator, to hire longshoremen instead of workers from another union. A court had imposed a strict injunction against illegal activity by the longshore union after some members had engaged in violent protests.

But the Occupy planners also knew that they had chosen a target that was symbolic of multinational corporations, including the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which owns a major interest in a company that operates many port terminals. They also figured that disrupting ports was relatively easy and likely to bring them lots of attention.

While the protests drew support from some port workers, others were dismayed by the disruptions.

“They’re taking money out of my pocket,” said Lee Ranaldson, 63, a nonunion trucker from Cleveland who said he had been blocked from dropping off his cargo of refrigerated meat for more than 12 hours. “Who are the leaders of this thing and what do they want?”

Some union leaders noted wryly that the Occupy movement — after gratefully accepting major donations of money, food, sleeping bags and winter clothing from labor unions — had repeatedly warned unions not to seek to co-opt them.

With the port effort, the Occupy movement suddenly seemed to be engineering protests and work stoppages on its own, essentially co-opting the unions’ cause instead of working with them.

While praising the Occupy movement’s goal of helping the 99 percent, Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, faulted the protesters’ tactics, saying, “I don’t know how you call a strike without involving the union or the workers.”

But the Occupy activists said unions were too timid about pushing the interests of workers.

“The 1 percent has been able to write and pass labor laws that are designed to restrict the amount of action that can legally be taken by a union. Most union officials today refuse to challenge those laws,” Occupy organizers wrote on a Web site explaining the port shutdown. “It is the responsibility of rank-and-file workers and their allies to escalate the labor struggle. Occupy can spearhead this movement.”

Some Occupy participants and labor experts asserted that the longshore union, which they said feared endorsing the protests because of the court injunction and pending contracts, was not really opposed to the port disruptions and was happy to see the Occupy protesters carry on its fight.

“It reminds me of what John L. Lewis, the great mine workers’ leader, did when the mine workers engaged in a wildcat strike,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “He’d give a wink and a nod.”

Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the longshore union, denied there was any such tacit approval and said his union resented the Occupy organizers’ assertions that the union was craven.

“It’s silly to lecture the I.L.W.U. about being overcautious when the members of this union have always been willing to be courageous and put their bodies on the line,” he said.

Malia Wollan reported from Oakland, and Steven Greenhouse from New York.

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