West Coast dock labor, shipping lines enter early contract talks
Representatives from the West Coast dock labor union and the shipping lines have agreed to start contract negotiations early next year.
The goal for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association is to reach an agreement before the expiration of their current six-year labor contract in July 2008.
'The PMA and its members are committed to good faith negotiations with the ILWU that will result in a win-win contract for management, for workers and for the U.S. economy,' said PMA President Jim McKenna in a statement.
ILWU President Robert McEllrath said his union is 'likewise committed to good faith negotiations and is hopeful that the parties can reach a conclusion to negotiations without transportation disruptions from either side.'
Both the union and shipping lines want to avoid repeating the 2002 10-day lockout. Shipping lines imposed the lockout after alleging that longshoremen deliberately organized work slowdowns. It's estimated that the lockout cost the U.S. economy between $1 billion and $2 billion a day. Hundreds of ships also piled up outside West Coast ports, and it took months to clear out the backlog of cargo in the ports once the lockout concluded.
The West Coast dock labor contract is complex, covering wages, benefits and conditions of employment for more than 14,000 workers in 29 ports spread across California, Oregon and Washington.
Roughly one-fourth of all U.S. imports, worth $423 billion, enter the country via container ships. West Coast ports account for nearly 50 percent of this cargo.
The ILWU talks will kick off what could be a stormy season of transportation labor problems, with the dockworkers, airlines and Teamsters all having contracts expiring.
The Teamsters union, including newly incorporated rail workers along with their traditional membership of truck drivers and warehouse workers, will see three of its largest national contracts expire in 2008. The National Master Freight Agreement expires March 31, while the UPS master contract and the National Master Auto Transportation Agreement later in the year. In all, the contracts cover more than 300,000 workers.
Similarly, nearly all of the union labor contracts for the major U.S. air carriers expire in 2008 and 2009.