New Jersey wants stevedores to be able to hire at will

New Jersey wants stevedores to be able to hire at will New Jersey has enacted a law that would allow marine terminal operators to hire workers as they are needed, without first seeking approval from the powerful Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, which is charged with trying to regulate the waterfront labor supply by balancing the supply of workers with demand for them.
   Gov. John Corzine signed the bill earlier this month, but it will not take effect unless New York State passes a similar piece of legislation. Versions of the proposal in New York are in legislative committees.
   A statement accompanying the New Jersey bill said it would “require the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor to accept any application for the inclusion of new employees in the longshoremen’s register of the Port of New York District upon either: 1) a written joint recommendation by the employers and labor organizations of the longshoremen; or 2) a written petition by an employer of longshoremen which does not have collective bargaining with a labor organization representing the longshoremen.”
   The Waterfront Commission’s power to limit the number of workers on the docks stems, in part, from its corruption-fighting mission. The agency was founded in 1953 in an effort to fight the kind of abuses that were dramatized in the famous movie On the Waterfront.
   At that time, the commission said longshore foremen would chose laborers from a daily “shape-up” based, in part, on their willingness to kickback a portion of their wages in exchange for the opportunity to work on the docks.
   In recent years, stevedores have chaffed under what they consider micromanagement of their business by the commission, which sometimes holds hearings where it asks terminal operators for evidence that there is a need to “open the book” or increase the number of available men and women who are allowed to work on the docks.
   A statement accompanying the proposed bill in New York claims that employers in the Port of New York and New Jersey “are the only employers in the nation denied the ability to perform the basic management function of hiring new workers or replacing those lost through attrition and retirement.”
   It claims “the conditions that prompted control of the labor supply “no longer exist” and that the current law “has become an anachronism    that impedes the expeditious hiring and training of additional dock workers needed to handle increases in cargo volume.”
   It claims the bill would give port employers “the authority to control the size of the longshore workforce without the artificial constraints of an administrative agency ill-suited for making market-driven commercial decisions.”
   The New York legislators said the bill would retain provisions requiring men and women who want to work on the waterfront to be reviewed by the commission “to insure the good character and integrity of the workers selected.”