Dockworkers’
proposal aims
to break impasse

Longshoremen offer job cuts
and technological advances
for a share of new wealth

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By Justin Pritchard
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO >> Dockworkers have presented a proposal they say should break a contract negotiation impasse with the shipping lines that bring billions of dollars of goods through West Coast ports -- allow new information technology, but bring technology workers into the union.

The union says the new proposal, presented to shipping lines Tuesday night, would cost hundreds of longshore clerks their jobs by opening the ports to computerization -- but in the long term would ensure union control of new jobs generated from increased efficiency on the waterfront.

"We are giving them what they are saying is their bottom-line, have-to-have out of these negotiations," said Steve Stallone, spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents 10,500 dock workers at all 29 major West Coast ports. "All we're asking for is work that should be ours."

The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents dozens of shipping lines that handled $260 billion worth of goods last year, said it was studying the proposal and would respond today.

The association has argued that West Coast ports are becoming bottlenecks in the supply chain of goods from Asia because the union has spurned technological improvements in an effort to save approximately 2,500 clerk jobs. Technology would make ports more efficient, and actually help them catch up with more-advanced competitors around the world, the association argues.

"We view it as the union at last signaling that they really do understand these issues," said association spokesman Jack Suite. "First blush is that there are some problems with it."

Stallone characterized the proposal as a bold stroke akin to an early-1960s agreement that introduced containerized shipping to the West Coast. That improvement cost union jobs, but also gave the remaining workers a comfortable share of the new wealth generated by the explosion of trans-Pacific trade.

A longshoreman's $80,000 average annual salary for full-time dock work rises to a $167,000 average for the most experienced foremen.

Under the new proposal, Stallone said, shipping lines would be allowed to use electronic records generated in Asian ports that detail what is in each container -- at present, clerks now retype that information. In addition, shipping lines could use computers to organize how containers are stacked in the yards so they can be loaded onto trucks and trains more quickly.

"With this proposal, now we'll see whether the PMA is serious about negotiating the contract, or whether they're just waiting to go ahead and bust the union with government intervention," Stallone said. "In the long term, there's definitely going to be less jobs for clerks. This is a very, very major change in how clerk's work is done."

The two sides have negotiated through a July 1 contract expiration, with each reporting slow progress. The timing of this proposal is influenced by next week's gathering of union delegates -- an unofficial deadline for both sides to get a proposal on paper.

Both sides have been agreeing to stop-gap contract extensions as they haggle over issues ranging from health care to new technology. Thus far neither has complained of any labor disruption on the docks.

With just a 20-day port closure costing the economy $48.6 billion, according to a report commissioned by the association, the White House and businesses are watching the negotiations closely.