Two sides to the West Coast story

Ritchie Blake, ILWU Local 63 | Feb 15, 2015 10:03AM EST.

As a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, I found it amusing that the JOC would defend its “non-biased” reporting on ILWU-PMA negotiations with statistics provided by the Pacific Maritime Association in a recent article by Peter Tirschwell.

I don't dispute the number of skilled operators from one job category that dropped from 110 to 35 on one particular day, but such a micro-focused event shows the JOC’s bias in and of itself. As usual, there are two sides to this story. First, the ILWU has been asking the PMA to register and train more longshoremen for years, and the request has fallen on deaf ears. There simply aren't enough trained operators for the demand of the current operations. The PMA unilaterally changed the working rules, which made that category of job less appealing, so workers opted for other skilled categories that had been ordered as well. Since PMA has refused to train and register enough people, many job categories have and will continue to go unfilled. PMA – not the ILWU – is responsible to make sure there are enough skilled laborers.

Mr. Tirschwell compared congestion to a full bathtub, but fails to ask, who plugged the drain, and kept it plugged? The PMA curtailed and then stopped all nightside and overtime vessel operations. Why? If the bathtub was full, why not drain it by loading out on the nightside when the opportunity presented itself? Ships both discharge and load cargo, and that wasn’t mentioned in Tirschwell’s article.

Mr. Tirschwell said, "We have no reason to doubt PMA's figures or allegations." As a news organization, JOC should scrutinize every allegation that’s sent its way by the PMA, which has hired a Texas-based public relations firm to influence reporting in their favor.

By blaming the union for the congestion it's caused, the PMA employers are killing two birds with one stone: evading responsibility for the employers’ failures, and gaining support from retailers, shipping companies, the public and Congress in hopes of boosting their standing at the negotiating table.

Here are a few ways the PMA member companies have failed:

1. Sold chassis fleet to third parties in order to increase profits even further. Third parties have not maintained an adequate supply of chassis, causing containers to be stranded on the terminals.

2. Leased out major parts of their terminals to others, which has limited working space and is causing massive congestion.

3. More than doubled the size of container ships without adding needed infrastructure to handle the massive amounts of containers in a terminal at once. This causes severe traffic jams and slow movement of cargo to and from the ships, railroads and to customers.

4. Not requiring retailers to immediately remove import cargo from terminals. Terminals are designed to be transitional container yards, not storage facilities. This means that there is no room for cargo to be staged to be loaded for the vessels, nor is there room for imported cargo to be discharged from the vessel.

5. Poor economic forecasting. This led to a lack of registering training qualified skill categories of labor, leaving them flat-footed and unprepared for cargo volumes and labor demands.

In addition, trucking companies are failing to pay independent truckers enough to support their families, forcing many to quit trucking altogether. This is adding to the difficulty in moving cargo off the dock.

The negotiations have provided the employers with cover for their mistakes, and unfortunately, the JOC and other publications are repeating their claims unquestioned. There is still a lack of trained skilled laborers and equipment. As the containers stack up in the yards, terminal operators charge shipping companies and retailers demurrage fees to store the containers. The longer a container sits in the container yard, the more money the terminal operators make by billing for this storage. Many employees at the terminals are receiving bonuses due to major profits being made by the terminals.

The terminal operators are claiming congestion as a reason that they initially stopped night operations, but they refused to load-out vessels, which would have relieved congestion.

The employers claim the system is overloaded, but they’re not working to relieve the pressure. Why? The answer is simple. They are trying to stall as long as they can in an effort catch up and hide their lack of preparation. If a new ILWU-PMA contract were signed today, the employers would have no one else to blame, so there is little incentive for the PMA terminal companies to conclude negotiations in good faith. Who suffers? Shipping companies, workers, businesses and the American economy. The Pacific Maritime Association needs to stop being irresponsible and reckless with their approach to these negotiations.