PMA makes take back proposal,

ILWU offers 7 day contract extension

Oct. 7, 2002

            Continuing with its union busting strategy, PMA made a contract proposal late last night that was full of takeaways and represented a move backwards in bargaining. PMA also rejected a mediator request to extend the old contract for seven days that the ILWU accepted.

            “It is clear from PMA’s latest proposal that they never had any intention of making an agreement,” said ILWU International President James Spinosa. “Their strategy has been all along to use the lockout to push this situation to crisis and get the government to bail them out with the Taft-Hartley injunction.”

            Rather than deal with the union’s main concern—that the jobs left over after the implementation of technology and the new jobs created by the technology be ILWU jobs—the PMA proposal will allow the companies to outsource those jobs. Although PMA has characterized the proposal as generous, it offers very little and takes away a lot.

The latest proposal offers no wage increases over the first three years of a five-year deal except for some crane drivers. For the first time ever in ILWU-PMA bargaining the pension offer cuts out current retirees and widows from further increases. The proposal guts the arbitration process, guaranteeing that no one from the industry will be involved. And the technology implementation plan clearly outsources clerk work. Management’s strategy is to do away with the union piece by piece until it can run the ports with no union workers at all.

            Last night, at the repeated request of the federal mediator, the ILWU agreed to what PMA has been saying it needed to end the lockout—a contract extension for seven days to deal with the backlog of ships and protect the American and world economy. PMA rejected the offer and is continuing its damaging lockout of West Coast ports.

            “First PMA says they need mediation to solve the problem and we give them mediation,” Spinosa said. “Then they say all they need is a contract extension to open the ports and we give them that. But PMA has rejected all pleas from the mediator to open the ports and continue bargaining. We are prepared to continue talking about the employers’ document submitted last night.”

            Spinosa pointed out that it was the union that pressured PMA to allow its members to work the ships with vital supplies bound for Hawaii and Alaska. The union continues to call for the employers to let it work similar essential cargo for the Pacific island American territory of Guam and the perishable produce sitting on docks and ships waiting in the harbors, as well as the grain American farmers desperately need to get out to export.

            “We have done every thing we can to get the economy moving again, but PMA is bound and determined to make a mess of it all,” Spinosa said.

            The ILWU is very concerned that when its members do get back to work, the backlog of cargo will create an unsafe speedup. Having five members die on the job in the last six months has raised major fears for the life and limbs of longshore workers on the congested docks. The Department of Labor has said that longshoring is second only to mining as the most dangerous work in the country.

For more information call ILWU Communications Director Steve Stallone at 415-775-0533 ext. 114 (office) or 510-390-4748 (cell) or see www.ilwu.org.

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