Employers: SoCal clerks æall get and no giveÆ
Employers of unionized clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on said in a statement released Thursday that while they have resolved issues on minor contract provisions during talks with Local 63A Office Clerical Unit (OCU) of the International Longshore Warehouse Union, “negotiations over core issues remain stalled after yesterday’s bargaining sessions.”
The employers group representing 14 shipping agencies and terminal operators complained that the union has been “all get and no give” in negotiations, the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor Employers Association said the union’s “defiant stance is guided by self-interest, not the welfare of the wider harbor community, and it adheres to a playbook that includes disruption of port operations in Los Angeles and Long Beach as a tactic to coerce employers into agreeing to unreasonable demands.”
The union’s contract expired on June 30.
The employers said they have offered “multiple, meaningful concessions,” but “OCU has refused to make any movement on any of the employers’ key issues, continuing to insist that employers hire temporary and permanent workers even when there is no work to perform and that the technology framework both sides agreed upon in 2004 and again in 2007 be dismantled.”