The bitterness of the current West Coast longshoremen's lockout was vividly demonstrated on Tuesday, Oct. 1, when the two sides met in Oakland, Calif., to explore federally mediated bargaining. Representatives of the Pacific Maritime Association showed up at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service office accompanied by two guards armed with pistols. International Longshore and Warehouse Union President James Spinosa, who said that both sides had previously agreed to bring only five negotiators apiece, was taken aback to see the entire negotiating team for the PMA with its security escort.
"Hiding behind the government and armed thugs, PMA's lockout is holding a gun to the head of the American economy," Spinosa declared angrily. "Now they move to aim real guns at us. We will not be intimidated." After the head of the FMCS, Peter Hurtgen, said he was aware of the PMA's plan to bring guards, Spinosa and the union delegates walked out. Hurtgen apparently was unaware the guards bore arms.
PMA head Joseph Miniace "was not aware that the security detail had remained on the floor after escorting him to the place where the meeting was set to occur," an association statement later said. "The PMA made the decision several days ago to employ a security detail for its lead negotiator. At that time, there was good reason to believe that security was necessary. That position has not changed."
The union has been reluctant to agree to federal mediation because high federal government officials intervened at the beginning of the talks last spring on a new longshoremen's contract. In May, Homeland Security director Tom Ridge, and later representatives of the Department of Labor, told Spinosa that federal intervention would follow any union strike or job action. Calling the prospect a threat to national security, they said they'd consider invoking the Taft-Hartley Act to send ILWU members back to work for 80 days --and might also use troops to run the ports and bring the union under the Railway Labor Act, making strikes virtually illegal and breaking up its coastwise labor agreement.
Once the union was locked out, its negotiators reluctantly agreed to explore federal mediation, at the request of the PMA. But the employers appeared to torpedo their own suggestion by arriving with an armed escort.
Tensions have been high since the PMA, representing shipping and stevedoring companies up and down the West Coast, accused the union of slowdowns and locked its members out of the harbor terminals last Friday, initially for 36 hours. When the dockers reported on Sunday, the gates remained locked in some terminals. In others, dockersworked a few hours and then were told to go home.
The lockout followed a week of accusations by the PMA that the union was engaged in a slowdown. Clarence Thomas, secretary-treasurer of ILWU Local 10, explained that the amount of cargo crossing the docks was greater than ever before, and even The Journal of Commerce noted that container movement was 30 percent above normal. "Five people have been killed on West Coast docks since the beginning of the year," Thomas said, "and the accident rate is very high." He attributed that to speedups on the docks, and the ILWU's negotiating committee urged union members to work at a safe pace.
Miniace called this a slowdown. "I will not pay workers to strike," he announced. "I will only pay them to work."
The unresolved issue at the heart of negotiations is the introduction of technology that would replace many longshore clerks with scanners and other equipment that can track cargo movement on the docks without any paperwork. The union has agreed to the introduction of this technology but says that union members should do other work produced by the same technology. The PMA has agreed to guarantee current clerks lifetime employment but refused to give the union any jurisdiction over any new work created.
The PMA position is a reversal of a strategic agreement forged by legendary longshoremen leader Harry Bridges in the 1960s, when shipping and stevedoring companies brought in container cranes to move cargo instead of the old hook and cargo net. Thousands of longshoremen lost their jobs, but Bridges ensured that union members would go to work in the cranes and at other jobs created by the new work system. The union seeks to continue the basic tradeoff, and says that if its members don't do the new jobs, their numbers will shrink and they will lose any control over the work process.
"The PMA wants to control the docks," says Richard Mead, president of Local 10. "That's what it's all about for them."
