A View From The Left-ILWU Contract-Shipping Bosses Buy Labor Peace, Undermine Union

Workers Vanguard No. 1069	29 May 2015

ILWU Contract-Shipping Bosses Buy Labor Peace, Undermine Union

 

Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) voted up a new five-year contract with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) with 82 percent in favor. By the standards of union contracts these days, when it is considered a “victory” for the union simply to survive, the ILWU contract might appear a veritable pot of gold. In addition to a wage increase totaling $6.50 an hour by the contract’s end and small increases in pensions, there were no cuts to the union’s health plan, which has no co-pay. This means that the ILWU will not have to shoulder the cost of the $150 million a year tax, mandated for so-called “Cadillac” plans under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which goes into effect in 2018. But as the old saying goes, all that glitters isn’t gold.

Vast changes are posed in the shipping industry with the widening of the Panama Canal, the consolidation of shippers into ever-larger conglomerates operating ships able to carry up to almost double the number of containers and the installation of automated cranes and yard vehicles at the largest terminals in the U.S. Throwing a little money the ILWU’s way, the PMA simply opted to buy itself some time, and five years of labor peace, to see how things shape up. Meanwhile, the shipping bosses obtained provisions that will continue to erode the fighting capacity of the ILWU by heightening already existing divisions in the union. This includes contract language aimed at stopping the ILWU from honoring picket lines of its own members!

With the onset of container shipping, the union was divided in 1959 between A-men who get the first choice of available work and B-men who only get to pick from among the unfilled jobs and are not accorded union membership. The widespread automation accompanying containerization slashed the workforce by a factor of ten and brought yet another division, the “steady men.” A layer of highly paid skilled workers, consisting largely of crane operators and mechanics, the steady men work directly for individual stevedoring companies, bypassing and undermining the ILWU hiring hall that is the embodiment of the union’s power. Later, the workforce was further divided by a category of “casual” workers, who only get work when the A and B lists have been exhausted and have no benefits or union rights. These divisions are a danger to the very existence of the ILWU.

Under the new agreement, casuals and other longshoremen with less work experience will not get the full wage increase, widening the divide between those first entering the industry and the A-men. Mechanics, on the other hand, get a larger increase. It is also widely rumored that the walking bosses—who are organized in their own ILWU locals and are responsible for overseeing union work at different terminals—got a massive wage increase. If so, this is a blatant attempt to bribe the walking bosses into becoming company men. In 1919, a strike by the Riggers’ and Stevedores’ Union, which represented longshore workers in San Francisco, was defeated and the union smashed after the gang bosses of that day split off from the union in the course of the strike. They formed the notorious “blue book” company union that ran the hated “shape up” system, under which corrupt gang bosses in league with the shippers called the shots on who would get work on the docks.

Longshore workers and their union allies literally laid down their lives in the class battles of 1934 to smash the “blue book” and win union control of hiring (see “Then and Now,” WV Nos. 1050 and 1051, 8 August and 5 September 2014). The hiring hall and ILWU-run job dispatch were designed to equalize work opportunity among all longshoremen. This system has been increasingly subverted since the 1960-61 Mechanization and Modernization Agreement negotiated by the ILWU’s historic leader, Harry Bridges. In addition, the coastwide unity of the ILWU has been undermined by unequal manning scales at different ports, creating resentment and tensions between ILWU locals as well as opening the door for the shipping bosses to play port against port.

Any struggle to restore the fighting power of the ILWU must begin with bringing the steady men back to the hall and championing union rights, pay and benefits at the highest rate for all longshore workers. Equal pay for equal work! For equal manning scales, at the highest level, at all West Coast ports!iew