Oakland port
reopens; talks
to resume

Hawaii cattle were
stranded for 2 days

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Cargo began moving on and off ships in the Port of Oakland today after a two-day work stoppage by a local unit of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union ended this morning.

Among the cargo that was stuck aboard ships during the stoppage were 300 live cattle from Hawaii.

They were en route to mainland customers and had been stuck in Oakland for two days.

Meanwhile, the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, representing the management of the shipping and stevedoring companies, said they will be back at the bargaining table tomorrow in negotiations for a new contract covering more than 14,000 union workers on the West Coast docks.

The contract is vital to Hawaii which relies on ocean shipping from the West Coast for most of its food and other goods.

Shipping companies said the Oakland walkout, which halted loading and unloading of 11 ships, had little effect on the flow of goods to Hawaii.

Sea-Land Service Inc. kept its Sea-Land Enterprise overni ght in Oakland so it could be loaded today and leave for Honolulu a day late.

Matson Navigation Co. sailed its containership Kauai from Oakland yesterday without most of the cargo it was to pick up there for Hawaii, but it did have a large load of goods from the Pacific Northwest, where it stopped before going to Oakland.

Matson and Sea-Land said they were adjusting their schedules to make up for the changes.

Four containers of live cattle from Hawaii, bound for Nebraska and Oregon, were held up in Oakland by the dispute. The shipment, worth $100,000 according its owners, Pacific Livestock Inc., was expected to move today.

Both sides said the walkout Tuesday morning by 1,400 ILWU members in Oakland and a separate action by clerical workers that slowed down activity at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were local matters, unrelated to the master contract.

However, statements from management and the union suggested that the timing was not a coincidence.

The PMA issued a statement Tuesday saying saying the Oakland walkout was "in the wake of their (ILWU) leadership leaving contract talks" on Saturday. The ILWU said that without a contract in place and the arbitration it would provide, its members had to act on their own.

The PMA and the ILWU also both made comments on the negotiations, after agreeing at the start of talks last month that they would not negotiate in the media.

Responding to a PMA news release that gave specifics of some of the benefits the PMA said it had offered the union, such as a 15 percent increase in pension benefits for retired union members, a union official today said that was a clear violation of the agreement not to bargain in public.

But the ILWU spokesman, Steve Stallone in San Francisco, went on to attack some of the PMA's points and himself revealed some of what he said the PMA is offering.

Asked if the PMA violated the agreement not to discuss offers and counter-offers in public, Stallone said: "They absolutely violated it, yes."

Then he went on to say that what the PMA isn't telling the public is that management's wage-increase offer is "less than 5 percent over three years."

The union's international headquarters, while saying that the Oakland walkout and the clerks' actions in Southern

California are unrelated to the contract talks and were done without ILWU leadership approval, has been pointing out that the ILWU has been working without a contract since last Thursday night.

Stallone said today that ILWU Local 10 in Oakland held a me eting yesterday. "They decided that without a contract in place and without the (contract's) arbitration machinery in place, this situation was just becoming a big standoff," he said.

They decided to go back to work for now and once there is a contract in place they will take their claim -- that the crane operators need more signalmen on the ground for safety -- to arbitration, he said.

Stallone disputed news reports linking an ILWU "slowdown" at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, where trucks were kept waiting to enter and leave the docks, with the Oakland action and the West Coast contract.

Before the Oakland dispute started and continuing after it ended, the clerical workers farther south decided to drop their common practice of coming to work early, working at lunchtime, and staying after their shifts, he said.

They are working the hours required in their contract, Stallone added.

When negotiations broke Saturday for the long Independence Day weekend, the ILWU took away a number of man agement proposals for study and the union is expected to come back with comments when talks resume tomorrow morning.

There has been no threat of a strike such as the 135-day West Coast walkout in 1971-72 and observers close to the talks in San Francisco have described both sides as optimistic that there will be a settlement.