BLOOMBERG NEWS Shipping containers are shown at a major shipping terminal in the Port of Oakland's Middle Harbor.

Dockworkers complain
to Feds over lockout threat

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By Rip Watson
Bloomberg News

San Francisco >> The International Longshore and Warehouse Workers filed a federal complaint against cargo carriers that last week planned a lockout of dockworkers at Los Angeles and Long Beach, the two biggest U.S. ports.

The union's unfair practices charge at the National Labor Relations Board names the Pacific Maritime Association, representing carriers, and Stevedoring Services of America Inc. of Seattle, a terminal operator. The filing says both planned a lockout, threatened to fire union workers and tried to assign unqualified employees to use a cargo-loading crane.

The carriers, which have been in a West Coast contract dispute with the union since July, planned a lockout Friday, claiming workers had conducted slowdowns at the two ports, which handled more than 7 million containers last year for retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

A union statement said carriers were manufacturing a labor crisis to sabotage the talks. "We sent the same number of people" to work on two days last week, union spokesman Steve Stallone said. "Somehow it was a crisis one day. On the other one it was no big deal."

A 10-day shutdown of West Coast ports might cost the U.S. economy as much as $19.4 billion, according to Martin Associates, a consulting firm.

"We look forward to having it reviewed by NLRB," Pacific Maritime spokesman Steve Sugerman said in an interview.

Sugerman said the union refused as recently as Saturday to sign daily contract extensions. That prevented the dispute raised in the union's NLRB complaint from being resolved through arbitration procedures in the old contract, he said.

Stevedoring Services filed its own NLRB charge about 10 days ago, said Andy McLachlan, a vice president of closely held Stevedoring Services. The company wants the right to decide whether the ILWU or another union handles work at a new terminal in Long Beach, where Mediterranean Shipping Co. is the primary customer.

The two sides are resuming talks this afternoon about how new technology will affect union jobs, said Stallone and carrier spokesman Jason Greenwald. Greenwald said he had no reports of work disruptions today.

The carriers are seeking to automate some operations, such as processing cargo lists called manifests. The union says Stevedoring Services, which operates 150 cargo terminals, has cut hundreds of union jobs by setting up new non-union companies and assigning the work to them.

The federal labor agency will investigate the complaint and could decide the case in as little as seven weeks, spokeswoman Patricia Gilbert said.