Election may tilt power at ports
By Justin Pritchard
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Though contract talks between West Coast longshore workers and shipping companies appear to be progressing, the dynamics behind their very public clash shifted when Republicans retook the U.S. Senate.
ssociated Press library photo • Sept. 30, 2002
The dispute that led to last month's 10-day shut down of major Pacific ports has been politicized since bargaining began in May — the dockworker's union being aligned with Democrats, the association representing shipping lines with Republicans.
The backup at ports such as Los Angeles-Long Beach that resulted from the 10-day lockout of dockworkers this fall cost the U.S. economy $1 billion a day, according to some economists. That prompted Republicans to question the power the ILWU exercises at the nation's ports, and may lead to efforts to break up the union.
"There's no question that the election of a Republican Senate on Tuesday has got to figure into the strategic thinking of both parties," said Peter Olney, a former ILWU organizer now with the University of California-Berkeley's Institute for Labor and Employment. "It's an extremely perilous moment for the union."
When President Bush ordered the ports reopened last month, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union said it was political meddling — and promptly marshaled Democratic lawmakers to help press its own case.
When the union's Democratic protectors lost their tenuous hold on the Senate, what changed?
In the short term, the Pacific Maritime Association has more bargaining power, Olney said, because for the first contract talks in a decade, the White House is Republican — and there's no Democratic control in Congress.
But shipping lines may not need that backup: both sides have projected optimism since a breakthrough last week.
Federal mediator Peter Hurtgen has until Dec. 26 to secure an agreement. Earlier this week, he recessed talks until Wednesday.
Spokesmen for both dockworkers and shipping companies yesterday downplayed the election results and said all they wanted was a fair contract.
Progress at the bargaining table has proven to be a good tonic. After chastising the union, Justice Department prosecutors have apparently done little about shippers' claims that the 10,500-member union has illegally slowed the pace of work.
The change in political power may matter more once the immediate contract crisis passes.
Though it was the association that locked out longshore workers, the union has attracted the attention of GOP lawmakers who may submit legislation challenging its control over every major West Coast port — the main source of its bargaining power.
The ports handle more than $300 billion in trade each year and some economists estimated the U.S. economy lost $1 billion each day as cargo piled up at docks and ships waited at anchor offshore.
"There is interest on (Capitol) Hill to look at this concentration of power at the ports ... and whether or not that's good for the country," said Randy Johnson, vice president for labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The union has suggested that the shipping association is following an agenda of international shipping lines to break powerful dockworker unions around the globe.
Yesterday, however, a union spokesman said the shift in power didn't rattle the dockworkers' top Washington lobbyist.
If there's a contract and goods are flowing, there's less drive to break the union into separate bargaining units, spokesman Steve Stallone said.
"They're thinking that we're going to get this thing wrapped up before the Republicans take over in January," Stallone said. "If there's a contract and everything is working again, you take away the immediacy of this having to be dealt with (through legislation)."
