Per JOC – the ‘War of Words’ continues….
The ILWU president challenged ocean carrier executives to become directly involved in contract negotiations in order to end the impasse. The PMA shot back that the ILWU’s statement “only underscores the need” for federal mediation in the negotiations which the employer group called for on Dec. 22.
So far the negotiations between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association have involved local union representatives and international officers on one side of the so-called Big Table and the PMA’s negotiating team on the other.
“Sure, my counterpart, Jim McKenna, has been involved in negotiations from the start, but all decisions are made by the carriers sitting on PMA’s board of directors. Indirect negotiations won’t get us over the finish line,” McEllrath said [ILWU President].
The PMA responded that the union’s charges are inaccurate.
“Our board and coast committee members, who represent carriers and terminal operators, have been intimately involved in these negotiations, starting in the months leading up to the contract talks and in the seven months since the talks began,” the employers’ group said Monday.
Following the PMA’s request for federal mediation in the negotiations, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service reached out to the ILWU to seek its response. The ILWU and PMA must both ask for mediation if FMCS is to become involved in the talks. In its statement on Monday the ILWU was silent on the issue of Federal mediation.
From JOC:
It took a week for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union to respond to the Pacific Maritime Association’s request for a federal arbitrator to break the impasse in negotiations that have been going on since May with no resolution — an idea the union clearly doesn’t like. And when the union finally did respond Monday, ignoring the issue of the mediator and calling for direct negotiations with carriers, it took the PMA 23 minutes to reply.
And when it did, the gloves came off. If there is one issue that employers know will undercut any possible sympathy the longshoremen would hope to have from the public, it is how much they make.
From the PMA:
“The average full-time ILWU worker currently earns in excess of $147,000, and is eligible for a pension with a maximum annual benefit of nearly $80,000 — and current proposals would increase these even further,” the PMA said Monday. The average U.S. per capita income was $45,863 in 2013.
From JOC:
Even though the ‘ILWU all along has denied that its members are engaging in work slowdowns’:
Vessels on Monday were continuing to back up at anchor at the Port of Oakland and truck turn times were three hours or longer now that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has chosen the Northern California port as its latest target for work slowdowns on the West Coast.
“The turn times in Oakland continue to deteriorate. The minimum turn time per transaction is three hours,” said Richard Coyle, president of Devine Intermodal, a Northern California trucking company.
Targeted work slowdowns by the ILWU are not new to the West Coast, but they are new to Oakland during the union’s contract negotiations with the Pacific Maritime Association, which remain unresolved after eight months of negotiations that began back in May. The PMA said the union’s slowdown tactics, which are designed to gain leverage in the negotiations, began in late October in the Pacific Northwest and in Los Angeles-Long Beach.
To continue to get the latest information on the West Coast port situation, keep checking Superior Freight’s news and blog posts.
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