ILA, USMX to hold informal talks this week

Longshoremen and employers are meeting far in advance of the contract expiration date next year.    Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) will meet with management representatives in Florida starting Wednesday for informal talks far in advance of the expiration of their current contract next year.
   ILA spokesman Jim McNamara said members of the ILA will continue to meet among themselves today for a second day before the union begins the joint “informal contract discussions” with the United States Maritime Association (USMX) tomorrow. “Perhaps, the ILA and USMX will have a statement at the conclusion of those talks,” he said.
   Early talks between longshore representatives and employers have long been urged by shippers that are eager to avoid strikes or other disruptions that occur when negotiations run right up to contract expiration dates or continue after they have expired.
   That happened in 2014 and 2015 during contentious negotiations between the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the West Coast dockworkers union, known as the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Ports were snarled and thousands of shipments were delayed at many West Coast container ports. Employers complained of worker slowdowns, while the ILWU said employers were not deploying enough labor.
   On Jan. 5, ILA President Harold Daggett noted how the union’s current six-year master contract runs until Sept. 30, 2018 – giving the ILA and the USMX 20 months to negotiate a new master contract at Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports or extend the current agreement.
   He said the talks this week are not formal wage scale meetings, but “will give the two sides an opportunity to address issues relating to our collective bargaining agreement. Sometime in the future, ILA locals will receive notice of when formal wage scale meetings will begin. At that time, ILA locals will be instructed to hold elections for ILA wage scale delegates and to submit lists of demands.”
   Daggett said he intended to relay two import issues to the employers. “One is that the ILA intends to put greater emphasis on local contract bargaining,” he said. “The last time around, several ILA local ports had failed to reach agreement on their local contracts before the master contract was ratified in April 2013. Major ports like Baltimore, Hampton Roads and Charleston were without local agreements for months and even years after the master contract took effect. The ILA will make certain that ILA members at all ports are satisfied with their local agreements before we ask them to ratify the entire contract package.
   “Secondly, I predict the issue of automation will dominate our master contract talks,” he added. “The ILA will not allow automation to rip apart our livelihoods and destroy our jobs and families. Right from the outset, the ILA intends to let management know that we are totally opposed to fully-automated terminals.”
   Daggett said that Bob Ellrath, the president of the ILWU, and he “both know that fully automated terminals spell the end of longshoring jobs, no questions asked.”
   He also added, “The ILA has no problem with semi-automated terminals – we know that we cannot stop progress and many forms of new technology help our workers do their jobs more efficiently, more safely, but without the threat of job elimination. We will continue to press for training and retraining for our ILA members.”