Waterfront Commission targets ‘no show’ jobs

   The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor released a report Tuesday on what it says are unfair employment practices in the bi-state port.
   The report comes as the negotiations on a new master contract between the International Longshoremen’s Association and employers are slated to begin later this month in Tampa on an agreement to replace one that expires Sept. 30.
   It also provides a window into work practices on the waterfront for shippers, many of whom are negotiating annual service contracts.
   The commission says the report is based on six hearings it held in 2010 that “demonstrated and publicized that certain hiring practices, achieved primarily through calculated provisions of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), illogical interpretations of other provisions, and claims of ‘custom and practice’ have created with the port no/low-work, no/low-show positions generally characterized by outsized salaries.”
   Nearly all unionized longshoremen in New York are represented by the ILA. It negotiates a master collective bargaining agreement for workers from Maine to Texas with an employer representative called the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX). It also has local agreements with the New York Shipping Association and the Metropolitan Marine Maintenance Contractor’s Association.
   The Waterfront Commission said “specific provisions” in the various CBAs allow unfair hiring practices to exist through illogical interpretations of those agreements and through claims of “custom and practice,” which often supplement or contravene the specific language of the CBAs.
    The report has three major findings:

• “The current system by which the CBA is structured and interpreted creates a significant number of prime positions on the waterfront that require little or no work and that command outsized salaries. Those positions are almost always filled with favored individuals – those who are connected to union leaders or organized crime figures.” Union leaders in the past have said longshoremen should not be tainted by the actions of relatives if they have been charged or convicted of crime. When he testified before commission in 2010, ILA President Harold Daggett noted dockworkers in New York have all undergone thorough background checks and have been given licenses by the Waterfront Commission.
• “Shop stewards who hold ‘prime’ positions are of particular concern since they have an incentive to avoid fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities.” The commission said these workers are paid some of the highest salaries on the docks, and that “this creates an incentive for shop stewards to protect the employers’ interests and not those of their fellow union members. This is in direct violation of either the letter or the spirit of the anti-benefit provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act.”
• “Timekeepers and other checkers earn exorbitant salaries, yet do not perform the work contemplated by the CBAs. Often the role of checkers, as exemplified by timekeepers, is based upon historic realities no longer valid in a world of containers, computers and scanners.”

   While the report focuses on higher paid employees, it also discusses staffing and work-relief practices at the docks for rank-and-file longshoremen.
   The Waterfront Commission has no role in labor negotiations. Essentially a law enforcement agency designed to fight crime and corruption in New York Harbor, it does play a role in regulating the supply of labor in the port by deciding if and when the labor pool in the port can be expanded. It said the hearings were “held pursuant to the commission’s statutory authority to investigate, collect, and compile information concerning waterfront practicies in the port.”
   The commission said it “recognizes in every industry there will be some jobs that are more desirable than others. We also recognize that where one person sees an enlarged workforce to be the result of unsupportable featherbedding, another sees those ‘excess’ jobs to be the result of safety concerns and a legitimate insistence on job security.”
   “The commission does not take a definitive position on the tension between the two, believing that this is a subject for real collective bargaining between the union and the employer associations.”
   Longshoremen are organized into units called “working gangs” and the report noted “there are minimum staffing requirements in the NYSA-ILA CBA with respect to how many individuals must comprise a working gang. For example, for container operations within the port, a total of 15 or 16 workers must be hired: one foreman, three crane operators, five or six drivers (depending on the equipment used) and six dock employees.
   “The second policy codified in the NYSA-ILA CBA is the relief system itself. Essentially, out of the 15 or 16 individuals in a gang, only nine or 10 are actually on their pier working. Similar relief structures exist for other pieces of equipment whether working with the gang or in the yard. NYSA President Joseph Curto explained that the rest of the workers are considered to be on a break.
   “Although they are not required to work, they are still paid as if they are working. This means that 45 percent of the workers hired to work in a gang are not working, yet are being paid as if they are. In the specific case of crane operators, the CBA requires that three workers be hired to operate one crane. Mr. Curto testified that in reality, since only one worker can operate the crane, the two ‘relief’ workers could be ‘just about any place.’ Essentially, this allows crane operators to be paid for 24 hours of work despite the fact that, for 16 hours in a workday, these individuals are not necessarily working.”
   The report highlighted that New York runs a “continuous operation” employment system in contrast to the West Coast ports where the workday is divided into shifts. The commission said the “continuous operation system requires a larger workforce.”
   The report made seven recommendations:

• “Ship time” or “terminal time” payments that go to a single person, whether or not the person is actually working, should be eliminated. The implementation of a shift system, rather than a continuous operation system for all dockworkerts would be highly advantageous change for port efficiency.”
• “Prime” positions – inflated salaries for little or no work – should be eliminated.
• “Desirable positions” should be fairly distributed based on “seniority and merit.” Training for these positions should be fair and based on objective criteria that will reduce -rather than increase – the lack of diversity in the port.
• “Secret ballot elections” should be held for shop steward positions.
• Shop stewards should be assigned the same responsibilities and be paid the same salary as their co-workers.
• Shop stewards should be trained to the provisions in their contracts and their responsibility in enforcing them.
• Check-in of checkers and longshoremen by timekeepers should be done in a manner that can be audited and takes advantage of technology and not highly compensated, favored individuals. — Chris Dupin