ILA, USMX plan early contract extension talks

International Longshoremen’s Association and employers represented by the United States Maritime Alliance will begin full wage scale meetings in mid‐September.    International Longshoremen’s Association and United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), the group that represents their employers, said Thursday they “concluded two days of productive exploratory talks on extending the current Master Contract and will begin full wage scale meetings in mid‐September, 2015.”
   “We are ready to move forward on talks aimed at extending the current ILA-USMX Master Contract,” said Harold J. Daggett, ILA president, and Dave Adam, CEO of USMX, in a joint statement.
   The current ILA‐USMX Master Contract runs until September 2018 and the two sides agreed to begin talks to extend that pact by up to seven years.
   “The ILA and USMX are committed to keeping commerce moving at United States Eastern and Gulf Coast ports and we think this extension will achieve that goal,” said the ILA and USMX.
   The East Coast dockworkers union and USMX said they will continue their dialogue on a labor contract extension at the union’s Quadrennial Convention scheduled for July 20‐23, in San Juan, Puerto Rico and then call ILA Wage Scale delegates and management representatives together for September meetings.
   The early talks are in sharp contrast to last year when the union for West Coast longshoremen, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the group that represents their employers, the Pacific Maritime Association, did not start contract talks until May 12, less than two months before their contract expired on July 1, 2014. An agreement was not reached until February 20 this year after assistance from both the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez. Ratification of the contract by the ILWU was not announced until May 22, 2015.
   Talks for the last contract negotiated by the ILA and USMX began on March 28, 2012. That gave them a slightly longer lead time, but they were not able to reach an agreement before the contract expired September 30. A  possible strike was avoided, and  again, with the assistance of the FMCS, a tentative contract was reached in February 2013.
   Shippers groups have long called for employers and dockworkers to begin talks early, and were pleased with Thursday’s announcement.
   “This is a highly commendable move by the two parties to this contract,” said Bruce Carlton, president of the National Industrial Transportation League, the nation’s largest shipper organization. “This statement from the ILA and USMX signals they are serious about bargaining in a responsible manner, and that they recognize there are thousands of businesses and millions of jobs in America that will be impacted not only by the result of their bargaining but also by their process.”
   Jonathan Gold, vice president for supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, said the announcement was “extremely good news” and that the two parties should be able to reach an agreement well in advance of the current contract’s expiration. Gold said it could even become a model for how such labor contract talks are conducted in the future.
   Gold said earlier this year after the ILWU ratification announcement, “Negotiators need to begin their talks early enough to have an agreement in place well before another contract expires. Stakeholders cannot afford to go through this process every couple of years. We need a new system in place that benefits all parties and provides for the efficient transportation of the nation’s cargo and commerce.”
   Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition said an early contract renewal at East and Gulf ports without disruption would be “an all-too-rare ray of hope.”
   “The backbone of America’s international trade – agriculture and forest products exports – continues to be battered by West Coast ports still not recovered from the protracted longshore labor contract dispute,” said Friedmann. “Millions of dollars of export sales continue to be lost, millions of dollars of additional supply chain costs continue to be incurred by exporters and importers trying to move cargo through congested, in some cases barely functional west coast gateways. The cost of diverting shipments to more distant but less congested gateways, remains a tremendous drain on all agriculture and forest products exporters and importers.”
    If East Coast and Gulf Coast ports “can maintain, or even increase operational/labor productivity, continue their investment in infrastructure, continue to expand vessel service options, and benefit by changing global supply chains, US agriculture and forest products exporters will, whether by necessity or choice, have a powerful incentive to increasingly look to Gulf and East Coast ports as key, and in some cases, primary gateways,” he added.