Teamsters Join Port Labor Rally

Just four days before the contract between dockworkers and shippers expires, the nation’s most powerful transportation unions joined forces Thursday in rallies held in port cities from Seattle to Wilmington.

The events aimed to focus support for the 10,500 International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers under contract, who are trying to achieve a resolution with the Pacific Maritime Assn. and avoid a work stoppage that could damage the U.S. economy.

The contract expires Monday at 5 p.m.

Last year, trade in the nation’s West Coast ports amounted to $260 billion of cargo. A shutdown of those strategic centers of commerce could cost the national economy up to $1 billion a day, according to a UC Berkeley study.

Both sides in the labor dispute acknowledged this week that talks were expected to continue beyond the contract expiration, but neither party is talking about a strike or union lockout.

Even so, the potential for even a limited disruption of port cargo has shippers anxious. For companies that rely on the ports, the union rallies are seen as potentially dangerous posturing, said some local import-export brokers.

About 2,000 dockworkers and their supporters attended the spirited rally Thursday at the ILWU’s dispatch hall in Wilmington. Dockworkers there said they wanted only to protect their rights, benefits and working conditions from being eroded by foreign-owned shipping lines.

Gathered under the banner “Unity on the Waterfront” and joined by a convoy of horn-blaring, Teamster-driven big rigs, labor leaders drew loud applause by vowing to step up their organizing efforts and make local ports “wall-to-wall union.”

“They’re trying to dismantle this union, and we’re not going to stand for it!” said Ramon Ponce De Leon, president of ILWU Local 13. “And there are unions in Southern California and dockworkers around the world who support us.”

At a rally in the Port of Oakland, ILWU President James Spinosa was joined by Teamsters President James P. Hoffa. Hoffa’s 1.4-million member union has promised not to cross ILWU picket lines. The ILWU has pledged to support the Teamster’s drive to organize port truckers, who get paid by the load, not by the hour.

In the meantime, contract negotiations were said to have hung up on health and welfare benefits. Negotiators were said to have begun Thursday to address the thornier issue of technological improvements called for by shippers to make the ports more efficient.

Dockworkers said the kind of automation and computerization being promoted by shippers--including measures that could allow clerical tasks to be performed at remote inland locations--could cost them jobs.

“Just because you can perform work from the moon doesn’t mean you should move our work to a deepwater port in Utah,” ILWU clerk representative Tommy Harrison said sarcastically. “We’re saying, use us. Put the technology where it belongs, on the waterfront and under union control.”

In a statement Thursday, Pacific Maritime Assn. President Joe Miniace said shippers had “guaranteed the union that no current registered worker will lose his job as technology is implemented.”

As the saber rattling of the ILWU and the PMA intensifies, businesses that depend on Pacific Rim markets were getting antsy about possible disruptions in the flow of commerce at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which make up the nation’s busiest harbor complex.

High-volume, low-margin port businesses were pleading for appeasement. Others were stockpiling imported goods and preparing to reroute deliveries and shipments, if possible.

“I don’t think either side should take a hard stand on anything right now,” said Guy Fox, executive vice president of Global Transportation Services Inc. in Redondo Beach. “The U.S. economy is barely getting back on its feet and can’t afford disruptions.”

A local firm specializing in exporting wastepaper products to Asian markets has started clearing all of its available floor space.

“If we can’t ship out, our warehouses will fill up in three days,” said a spokesman for the firm, who declined to identify the company for fear of antagonizing either side in the negotiations. “If the ports shut down for longer than that, we’ll have to haul product to landfills. In any case, prices for it will collapse.”

Michael Nacht, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, agreed that the economic costs of a work stoppage at the ports would be high and worsen quickly.

“West Coast ports last year handled 7.7 million freight containers, or 21,000 every day,” he said. “Fourteen days of shutdown would mean over 300,000 containers would not be going out or coming in.”

West Coast docks suffered strikes in 1934, 1936-1937, 1948 and 1971, when dozens of incoming freighters were forced to anchor just offshore.

Ponce De Leon downplayed chances of a disruption.

“Everybody’s got to stop listening to groups that are saying there’s going to be a strike--we’re not using that word,” he said.

PMA spokesman Jack Suite also said a strike or lockout was the last thing the shippers wanted.

“This contract negotiation is crucial to the nation’s economy,” Suite said.

“What is important is to stay at the table, work through the issues and emerge with a contract that positions the waterfront for another 30 years of growth.”