L.A.-Long Beach clerks resume talks

L.A.-Long Beach clerks resume talks    The president of the union representing clerical workers at Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach terminals said Tuesday night that contract negotiations with employers will resume today.
   “Unfortunately, we are still very far apart on what are the core issues,” said John Fageaux Jr., president of Local 63 of the Office Clerical Unit of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in a telephone interview. “I don’t see that we are going to be making any real progress in the next week or so. I’m hopeful that we will, but I am not very optimistic about it.”
   The Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbor Employers Association, the group of 14 employers negotiating individual contracts with the OCU, said they are offering complete protection against layoffs due to existing or new workplace technologies — with a promise not to outsource any jobs or transfer any bargaining unit work away from the OCU — and additional protections against layoffs for any other reason. But they also have said the OCU is maintaining what it called “unacceptable ‘featherbedding’ demands.”
   Fageaux said the companies are “misleading the public into thinking that they have agreed to language which gives us the job security that we are looking for and we have always had.”
   He said the employers want to take away a “no-layoff” clause that the union has had in past contracts, and wants to modify contract language that would allow them to use new and existing technology to outsource jobs that historically been done by the union
   The OCU represents about 900 employees, about 650 of which are full-time workers.
   “The union is going to do everything it can to reach an agreement without a strike. All we can do is our part. The employers have basically drawn a line in the sand and they are trying to take back provisions in the contract that we have had for many years and the union is not agreeable to that,” he said.
   Pointing to one company that said it had profit of $2 billion between 2006 and 2009 and then losses last year and in early 2010, Fageaux said, “they want to reach into the pocket of the working people and try to make up for some of those losses and it is not right and we are not going to stand for it.
   “The most important thing that the union is seeking is basically to maintain the contract language that we have had for many years. We are not looking to expand our jurisdiction, expand the size of our workforce. We are looking to maintain the language to maintain the current level of union members we have right now,” he said.
   Earlier this week OCU members ended a strike against three employers at five terminals in Los Angeles and Long Beach.
   Before going on strike last week, Fageaux said the union had proposed “a zero increase in wages over the life of the contract. If that doesn’t drive the message home that this is not about wages, but just about job security — we wanted to make that perfectly clear and I think we did that.” ' Chris Dupin