From
the Portland Oregonian, October 4, 2002
In the grandest tradition of their robber baron forefathers, the Pacific Maritime Association recently brought renewed meaning to the phrase, “negotiations at the point of a gun,” when the PMA brass showed up at the bargaining table on October 1, 2002 with bodyguards “packing heat.”
The
significance of these “thugs with guns” was not lost on the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union leadership, who quickly left rather than submit
to intimidation.
This
latest action by the PMA in their lockout of west coast longshoremen serves as
a poignant reminder of the mood and tenor of the bloody and bitter 1934
Maritime Strike that ultimately gave birth to the ILWU.
Two
union men were killed in that strike, which lasted nearly three months and
eventually spread to almost all the unions up and down the entire west
coast. The longshoremen’s main issues
then were the right to a coast-wide agreement and jointly operated hiring halls
– two of the most important gains ever made by the union.
Like
1934, the important issues on the table in the current bargaining sessions are
seemingly insignificant, and do not center around money. Instead, they concern work jurisdiction
– a concept that is at best, hard to embrace.
The basic line in the current talks is that the PMA wants to “modernize”
the west coast ports and introduce new computer technology onto the docks. Yes, they say, some jobs would be lost, but
all current employees would be guaranteed jobs for the rest of their
lives. And to sweeten the pot, the PMA
has offered increased pensions.
Now
at first blush, this sounds very reasonable.
What right-thinking person would oppose the introduction of labor-saving
technology? Sure, some jobs will be
lost, but those workers will be compensated fairly. Very reasonable.
In
response, the union has made an honest attempt to bargain over the issue. The obvious question is that if certain jobs
will be lost by the introduction of technology, what then of the technology
jobs themselves? Could these not be
traded for the jobs lost? And that is
the crux of the union’s counter-proposal – all they want is the right to any
new jobs created.
The
PMA has flatly rejected this. And by
refusing to bargain on the subject, they’ve shown their true colors: in
reality, the PMA’s proposal is nothing more than an insidious, back-door attack
on the union. Their interest is not in
“modernization” at all, but rather in breaking the union. This is crystal clear.
The
true intent of the PMA’s proposal is to decimate The ILWU’s membership by
contracting-out various jobs to non-union workers. It wouldn’t happen overnight – it would be a long, slow and
subtle process. But the eventual
outcome would be just the same – the ILWU’s flame would dwindle and in a short
space of years, cease to exist. A
union’s strength is its members and a slow, gradual, chipping-away of
membership would sound the ILWU’s death knell just as surely as if it had
happened overnight. The ILWU leadership
should be lauded for seeing this for what it is, and not giving in to the
temptations of the PMA’s offers of easy money.
Right
from the start of the talks, the PMA has systematically pursued its goal of
breaking the union. Emboldened by what
they perceive to be a favorable political climate, the PMA stalled and dragged
their feet throughout the contentious negotiations. The strategy is very
simple: their hole card as they see it, is George W. Bush, and they count
heavily on the Bush administration intervening to provide the clout necessary
to bludgeon the ILWU into accepting their demands. According to press reports, one of the options discussed with the
administration actually included the extreme step of planning to have Navy
personnel unload ships. Thankfully,
that scenario hasn’t played out yet and hopefully won’t.
Then
finally after months stalling and of fruitless negotiations – when it became
clear the union wouldn’t just roll over and play dead – the PMA went on the
attack and took the outrageous and unprecedented step of locking-out the
longshoremen.
In
doing so, the PMA is effectively holding the economy of the entire nation
hostage in their bid to break the ILWU.
But
then this sort of action is easily understandable when viewed in the proper
context: the PMA is an organization
controlled by the major shipping lines, mostly foreign companies based for
instance in China, Taiwan, Korea, Denmark, Japan and so on. As such, it’s easy to imagine that an
organization dominated by these foreign interests would have little regard for
something so paltry as the American economy, much less American workers.
This
is absolutely and unequivocally intolerable.
The
PMA must give up its greedy bid to break the union. It must accept to the union’s very reasonable proposal and stop
this assault on the nation’s economy at once. The longshoremen must be allowed to return to work now, on
their own terms, before our nation suffers grave and irreparable harm.
Let’s
not revisit the horrors of 1934.
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