ILA members ratify contract extension

ILA members ratify contract extension    The International Longshoremen's Association and United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) said dockworkers on Tuesday ratified a two-year extension of their existing master contract through Sept. 30, 2012.
   The new contract negotiated by the ILA and USMX passed by better than 65 percent, said ILA President Richard P. Hughes Jr. The union said according to a preliminary tally 6,417 out of 9,736 dockworker union members casting ballots voted in favor of the extension.
   'When we began Master Contract Wage Scale talks with USMX last year, ILA members indicated to us that there were five major areas of greatest concern to them. With their vote today, our members recognized that we made gains or improvements in all those five major areas: wages, tiered wages, removal of the container royalty cap, jurisdiction and new technology,” Hughes said.

Hughes

   Settlement and ratification of the new contract more than 10 months before the current pact was due to expire “protects our ILA ports from loss of cargo, due to diversion which may have occurred without a contract in place. Shippers now have the assurances they want to keep cargo coming to ILA ports on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports,' he added.
   The union said the “the length of the extension — 24 months — has a two-fold positive effect. It does not lock the ILA in for an extended period, but it does allow time for the shipping industry to stabilize and start to grow as the economy recovers.”
   'We strongly hold that our national and worldwide economies will improve during the life of this contract, with a return to high volume container traffic,' Hughes said. 'With the removal of the container royalty cap, our members could reap tremendous benefits during the life of this contract extension and put us in an even stronger position to negotiate when this contract term ends.”
   Under the new contract, the minimum wage for workers will rise to $20 per hour immediately. Wages for senior members will increase by $1 per hour on Oct. 1, 2011, and lower paid “tiered” workers will also see wage increases. The union estimated “nearly 90 percent of the current workforce covered under this agreement will all be at the $32-an-hour wage by the end of the final year of the contract in 2012.”
   The union said there will be more container royalty money available to each local port, more money from the container royalty fund to stabilize local port benefits, and health care benefits will be protected. The union said there will also be more protection for workers from the impact of new technology and that work jurisdiction was strengthened.