These are the toughest contract negotiations the ILWU’s Longshore Division has faced in a long time. Not since 1948, when our strike broke the old Waterfront Employers Association and the Pacific Maritime Association was set up in its place to resolve the dispute, have we seen an employer so emboldened, so ready and eager to bust the union, so intently focused on making this contract the one that will eliminate the ILWU—if not immediately, then over the long term.
It was apparent right from the first day of bargaining that the employers were on a mission in this set of negotiations and it got clearer as we met from day to day. Their opening proposal was full of takeaways. They hit us in every direction. They didn’t leave anything out, from maintenance of benefits, to the dispatch hall to the arbitration system and the workplace.
They’ve done this because they know they have the Bush administration on their side. A secret White House Task Force, including top officials from the Dept. of Labor, the Dept. of Defense and the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, has been established to plot with the PMA and the retailer group, the West Coast Waterfront Coalition, to take out the ILWU. This Task Force has contacted me and the other officers of the Coast Committee and made threats. It has threatened to invoke a Taft-Hartley injunction against our union, to pass special legislation to restrict our legal collective bargaining rights and to break up our coastwise contract. Most ominously, it has threatened to bring National Guard troops onto our docks.
The PMA knows all about these threats and so the employers have no reason to be reasonable, no incentive to negotiate seriously. Every proposal they have brought to the table was carefully crafted to be unacceptable to the union. They have tried to provoke us into an action that would bring the Bush administration down on us.
The number one priority of the Longshore Caucus was maintenance of benefits and the PMA knew that. So the employers came in demanding deep cuts in our benefits package. They’ve backed down a little, but are still asking for cutbacks as well as a two-tier benefit system that will eliminate the option of new members to choose their own doctors and eventually do that to all members. But the Negotiating Committee has kept its marching orders and has refused to yield in this area. The employers are also hell bent on changing our arbitration system that has stabilized our union and our industry since 1948. Sure, we have taken our hits in that system, we have had to take our losses along with our victories. But it protects our contract and we know that we are getting a fair shake from it.
The employer’s attempts to seize our jurisdiction have been most distressing of all. For the last three years the employers have been saying their priority is new technology. We put a technology proposal on the table, a proposal that would eliminate a significant number of clerk’s jobs. In the spirit of the Modernization and Mechanization Agreement of 1960 that brought containerization to our docks, we said we wanted the jobs that remain. We want the jobs connected to that new technology. We want to get back the clerks’ planning jobs that have been outsourced, the work operating the employers’ offdock container yards and the work draying containers to and from those yards.
But the employers have said “no,” there is no room for the ILWU in their expansion. They will outsource that work instead. It is unthinkable that we would buy into a proposal that says we are not their primary workforce, one that allows others to do our work. Your Negotiating Committee has stood firm on this because without jobs there are no wages, no benefits, no pensions and no union to protect them.
But we will never get to productive bargaining until the Bush administration gets out of our business. Bush is creating a new policy that says that union rights are a national security threat. We can see that in how he is trying to take away the union rights of government workers being transferred into the new Dept. of Homeland Security. And we can see it in the way he is trying to take our rights to economic and job action guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRA is the civil rights law for workers—it recognized and legalized workers’ basic rights to organize into unions, to collectively bargain contracts and to strike. It has been a part of American law and society since 1935.
A union’s strongest weapon is withholding its labor. And let’s be frank about what we are facing. The ILWU’s Longshore Division is 10,500 blue-collar workers up against the 79 multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporations that comprise the PMA. It’s a classic David versus Goliath scenario and now Bush wants to take away the biggest source of power we have.
The Bush administration’s policy and actions are so abhorrent— especially its threat of military intervention into our negotiations— that the AFL-CIO is making our contract a top priority for the American labor movement. The AFL-CIO is giving us staff and resources and joining us in a national campaign to get the Bush administration out of our negotiations and let us bargain fairly with our employers without interference.
We also have our new solidarity agreement with the Teamsters and the East and Gulf Coast International Longshoremen’s Association, as well as support from the worldwide dockers movement through the ITF (International Transport Workers Federation) and the IDC (International Dockworkers Council). We have received pledges of solidarity from unions across the globe.
But it is going to be us—the members of the ILWU—who have to get this done. This is our job. We have to stay focused and never lose sight of where we came from and where we have to go. We have to make sure that we turn over these jobs to those who are going to follow tomorrow.
I urge all members to get in touch with your local officers and volunteer to help in our campaign to get Bush out of our negotiations. Remember, this is a fight for the very existence of the ILWU. This is a fight for your job, your health benefits, your pension. Let’s get on with it
