Dock contract talks break off
By Justin Pritchard
Associated Press
OAKLAND, Calif. — Negotiations over a new West Coast dock workers contract broke off late yesterday with longshoremen and shipping lines accusing each other of ignoring good faith offers and ruining what had appeared to be a hopeful exchange of proposals.
Officials at both the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have been publicly upbeat about negotiations — even as they conceded there was little progress since their contract officially expired July 1.
Talks this weekend, they said, would foreshadow either a quick conclusion or a protracted dispute over a deal that governs about $260 billion worth of goods that transit 29 major ports from San Diego to Seattle.
Last week, the union offered what it cast as a fair and reasonable proposal to the tangled problem of how to introduce more efficient technology to the waterfront without making too many jobs obsolete.
Shipping lines countered yesterday afternoon and the two sides emerged pointing fingers.
"They seem to almost reject my proposal out of hand, and it's a bitter disappointment to me," Joseph Miniace, Pacific Maritime's chief executive officer, said after yesterday's negotiations. "This was a melding of both proposals and we've come a great distance since negotiations began."
A union spokesman responded that the association had hardly budged from a preliminary offer of months ago — and that was galling because the union had offered to accept job cuts for job security as computers do more work on the docks.
"We offered him everything he asked for. He gave us nothing. Zero, zip, zilch," said Steve Stallone, a spokesman for the union which represents 10,500 dock workers. "It's a major disappointment and it shows that he's not really trying to negotiate."
Both sides did approve another 24-hour contract extension, as they have done since July 1.
Both sides have promised harmony on the docks. The union downplayed initial murmurs of a strike and shipping lines say they won't lock out workers unless they determine there has been an organized slowdown.
