West Coast dockworkers contract expires, talks continue
As West Coast dockworkers prepare for a long holiday weekend to celebrate both Independence Day and 'Bloody Thursday,' negotiations for a new labor pact continue.
Talks are set to continue between officials of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing about 26,000 dockworkers, and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents more than 70 shipping lines and terminal operators that hire the dockworkers.
The ILWU told its members to report to work as usual despite no agreement to extend the current six-year contract, which officially expired at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
'Members should continue working as normal while the ILWU Negotiating Committee keeps meeting to reach a fair contract,' the union told members on its Web site. 'The Negotiating Committee wants everyone to dispatch and work normally without any slowdowns or other actions.'
The union told members that while most procedures and operations would continue as usual, there will be no arbitration process over disputes occurring after the contract expiration.
Negotiations, which began in March, have reportedly been slow but very businesslike. ILWU and PMA officials have said publicly that they are confident that a settlement can be reached in a timely fashion with no disruption to activities at the 29 West Coast ports.
Independent equity analyst Edward Wolfe said in a research note Wednesday that there are rumors longshoremen may participate in work slowdowns in the near term. Although the two sides appear to be working amicably towards a new labor agreement, the ILWU declined to formally extend the current contract, which includes a no-strike clause.
The Wall Street Journal also ran a two-paragraph article that said unattributed West Coast port operators are concerned that the ILWU failure to extend the expired contract might be tactic leading to slowdowns.
Last week, both sides reported surmounting a major hurdle in the talks with the initial approval by negotiators of a tentative health care benefit agreement. Maintaining the current health care package for its members was a primary goal of the ILWU's negotiating platform going into the talks.
While the health care benefit issue has been tentatively worked through, negotiators are still working to reach agreement on several major topics, including wages, pensions, and safety rules.
The ILWU and the PMA reaffirmed Wednesday that the talks were moving forward and that a primary concern of both sides was to avoid any impact on West Coast port operations.
'The PMA is working hard to resolve the remaining issues,' the employers' association said in a statement.
ILWU spokesman Craig Merrilees added, 'We’re going to keep talking, and the ports are going to keep working.'
However, the PMA said Wednesday that an extension of the current contract would 'have sent a much stronger message to the shippers and the public that the West Coast Ports will continue to operate without disruption.'
Richard Aschieris, director of the Port of Stockton, said that while he has not been involved in the contract talks he finds a repeat of the 10-day PMA lockout of ILWU in 2002 unlikely.
'I’ve had contact with people that are involved (in the negotiations) ' They’ve always been very positive,” Aschieris told the Stockton Record Wednesday. “They didn’t think it would be unusual if the negotiations would go beyond the technical expiration of the contract, just because of the logistics of getting the final negotiations done and the final approvals carried out.'