New Jersey legislature votes to withdraw from Waterfront Commission

The commission, created to fight corruption and regulate hiring at the ports, said the legislation is unconstitutional.    Both houses of the New Jersey State legislature have passed a bill to repeal the compact establishing the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.
   The Waterfront Commission is a specialized police agency that was created in the 1953 to fight corruption on the docks in New York and New Jersey. It does background checks on workers, has the right to bar workers from the waterfront and also regulates the size of the port’s workforce.
   Monday, the New Jersey Assembly unanimously passed a bill (75-0) to have the New Jersey State Police take over many of the Commission duties in New Jersey, where the vast majority of the cargo moving through the bi-state port is handled. The New Jersey Senate passed similar legislation by a vote of 36-0 in December. The bill now goes to Gov. Chris Christie, where his office said it is under study.
   N.J. State Senator Raymond Lesniak (D) said there is no penalty for withdrawing from the commission, which he noted was intended to be a temporary agency when it was set up. He said New Jersey does not need permission from New York State to withdraw from the compact.
   Lesniak contends the agency “has interfered with the daily operations of our terminal operators to the extent that they can’t get the workforce in place when needed and have complained vociferously that they are losing commerce to other states.”
   The Waterfront Commission has clashed with the International Longshoremen’s Association and groups that represent employers such as the New York Shipping Association and Metropolitan Marine Maintenance Contractors’ Association over its regulation of the number of workers they are allowed to hire, as well as hiring procedures.
   Last year, NYSA President John Nardi said, “We are the only port in America that has to jump through such bureaucratic hoops just to fill one empty position, let alone the hundreds that remain. We already are seeing cargo being rerouted to other ports due to the delays in hiring skilled labor. There is a better way. Like every business, we need a right-sized work force of well-trained, diverse and capable individuals as determined by the employer, not a quasi-governmental agency.”
   The groups also sparred in court. 
   Phoebe S. Sorial, general counsel for the commission said it was accused of  “overstepping its statutory authority by requiring that hiring in the port be done in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. They alleged that we were improperly interfering with their collective bargaining rights by doing so.”
   A federal judge, however, sided with the commission, finding that “eradication of racial and gender-based discrimination is a purpose of the compact” between New York and New Jersey that created the commission in 1953.
   In the most recent annual report of the NYSA, Nardi noted that his group’s top priority last year was to bolster the labor supply in the port because the longshore workforce had “diminished through attrition and on top of that, (was) facing the loss of an additional 300 retirees in 2014.” The retirees were part of what he said was a “ground breaking” 2013 collective bargaining agreement with the ILA.
   NYSA and ILA applied on Sept. 9, 2013 to add 682 longshoremen and checkers, but said the commission did not issue a determination to accept the additional workers until Dec. 3, 2013. According to statistics posted on the NYSA website as of Feb. 19, the 71 checkers and 506 longshoremen have since been hired.
   Lesniak said warehouse operators in the region have complained the Waterfront Commission has tried to extend its jurisdiction to their operations and they have lost business as a result.
   “Since New Jersey has 70 percent of the commerce coming into the port, we believe that the authority to regulate that commerce belongs to the State of New Jersey,” said Lesniak.
   “This has been a festering problem for years that has presented many obstacles to our New Jersey being competitive with other ports up and down the East Coast,” he added.
   Sorial said in a statement after yesterday’s vote, “During the legislative hearings no one appeared to be even remotely concerned with the legality of the bill, and with the fact that it is totally unconstitutional. If passed, the bill would have no impact on the law as currently codified in New York. The current Waterfront Commission would continue to exist. The bill would not abolish or curtail the Commission’s activities. It would simply create an entirely new set of duties and responsibilities for the NJ State Police, and impose an additional set of assessments on Port employers to pay for those activities. So, to the extent that the New York Shipping Association is supporting this bill, it is supporting an additional charge on its members.
   “With New Jersey’s withdrawal from the Compact, New York would be left with unfettered discretion to establish fiscal policies without any guidance or oversight from New Jersey, and without any obligation to ensure that such policies are consistent New Jersey laws and practices,” Sorial added. “It is for this very reason that a state cannot unilaterally withdraw from a bi-state compact, and the proposed bill is unquestionably unconstitutional. There is absolutely no question that if passed, this measure will not withstand judicial scrutiny.”