Shippers Push for Early ILWU Contract Negotiations
LONG BEACH, Calif.—Shipping line operators would like to avoid a repeat of the disastrous 2002 lockout, when all West Coast ports, including Long Beach and Los Angeles, were paralyzed for 11 days over a contract dispute with longshore workers.
Even though the next contract doesn’t expire until July 2008, the Pacific Maritime Association, representing the shipping lines and terminal operators that employ the workers, is asking that negotiations begin and end this year.
“The union and the management must recognize the importance of a timely agreement without disruption,” said Jim McKenna, president of the San Francisco–based Pacific Maritime Association, speaking on March 6 before 1,200 people at the seventh annual Trans-Pacific Maritime Conference, organized by the Journal of Commerce. “In an effort to avoid any potential disruption, I have notified the union of the employers’ desire to begin and conclude negotiations early.”
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 15,000 workers at the West Coast ports, was invited to speak on the issue with McKenna. But Bob McEllrath, the union’s president, said he had to be on the East Coast for an AFL-CIO meeting. Instead, he issued a statement saying the union would not be able to comment on the issue until after the semi-annual Longshore Caucus in San Francisco April 30–May 4.
Tom Price, a spokesman at the ILWU headquarters in San Francisco, said the caucus meets and votes on various resolutions and decisions, which then directs union leaders on how to act on various issues. “They will decide how they want to respond,” Price said.
McKenna said the PMA would be sitting down at the negotiating table and pushing to employ more technology on the waterfront, which in the past has been a sensitive issue for union leaders, who fear it may lead to job loss.
Technology was one of the dividing points during the 2002 negotiations. Terminal operators and shipping lines wanted to add bar scanners, RFID identification and cameras that employed optical character recognition to read container numbers, which they ended up doing.
“To a lot of people’s surprise, the resulting technology has been beneficial to all,” McKenna said.
Despite the new technology, the longshore union’s ranks are growing rather than declining. For example, it now takes fewer marine clerks to process containers in and out of the terminals, but the marine-clerk division has grown in the last five years from 1,000 to 1,500 people at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. That’s because container traffic has been growing at double-digit rates at the local ports during the last decade.
Nobody wishes to see a repeat of the Sept. 27–Oct. 7, 2002, shutdown, which created havoc for many apparel companies waiting for holiday shipments to arrive from Asia. Economists calculate that the shutdown cost the U.S. economy $15 billion and took more than three months for companies to recuperate.
“I believe that both sides must drive through for early agreement,” McKenna said. “Failure to do so will create economic loss caused by uncertainty.”
