Dock negotiations resume

Advertiser Staff and News Services

West Coast dockworkers and port-facility owners were back in negotiations yesterday and goods were flowing normally through the ports as the immediate threat of a shutdown and possible strike appeared to have lessened after a tense week.

Cargo was unloaded from the Dresden Express at the Long Beach, Calif., port yesterday. Goods flowed on schedule as West Coast operators and dockworkers stepped back from the brink of a major work stoppage. Associated Press

The apparent conciliatory gestures by both sides yesterday raised hopes that the PMA would work out a contract with the ILWU without resorting to an extended slowdown or strike that, if prolonged, could cripple Hawai'i's economy and lead to commodity shortages.

"Something could still happen, but this is good news," said Jeff Hull, spokesman for Matson Navigation Co., one of two major shipping companies that runs container ships between Honolulu and Mainland ports.

"Today's a much better day (than Thursday), things are going very well," he said yesterday. Matson's regular Friday ship to Hawai'i from Oakland, Calif., was loading as normal, Hull said.

Matson had been prepared to send the boat half-full to Hawai'i on Thursday if workers hadn't shown up, he said.

The talks between terminal owners and the union, which represents about 10,500 workers at ports in California, Oregon and Washington, have become increasingly tense since the previous contract expired this summer.

Talks, which had been extended on a day-by-day basis, have bogged down in differences over the owners' plans to upgrade shipment tracking and logistical technologies. The union wants assurances that all new jobs arising from the upgrades will be reserved for union workers.

The union decided in early September not to extend its contract, which set the stage for legal slowdowns or a strike. But the shipping company association, which represents more than 80 shipping and terminal operators, has said it would not tolerate work slowdowns.

On the waterfront, job actions such as those alleged this week are called hard-timing, working to rule or simply slowing down. By any name, it's an undeclared union job action that stifles production and can bring an international shipping company to its knees.

Cranes move at half-speed. Paperwork gets lost. Break times are assiduously observed as ships stack up at the docks. Before long, economic losses are climbing into the millions.

Terminal operators characterize it as a "strike with pay" and claim it has become a routine strategy of the union during contract negotiations.

This year is no exception, the employers claim. What is different, they say, is their decision to meet any orchestrated slowdown with an immediate closure of the ports.

Sounds simple enough. But as illustrated by the drama of the past week, defining and proving a slowdown is harder than it might seem.

The association insists the union staged a "targeted slowdown" at one Long Beach terminal throughout the week by failing to dispatch sufficient work crews to unload a ship. The PMA spent much of yesterday attempting to prove that.

Meanwhile, the union countered with its own evidence that the failure to fully staff the terminal was due to legitimate safety concerns, a glut of work on the docks and a shortage of skilled equipment operators. Union spokesman Steve Stallone called the PMA's lockout threat "provocative and reckless."

The back-and-forth left many port veterans rolling their eyes, in part, because the arguments were familiar. "There are many ways of playing this game," said one company official who asked not to be named, fearing his dock could be targeted next.

The PMA claimed the union staged slowdowns in each of the past two contract negotiations, in 1996 and 1999. The union, in turn, denied they happened every time.

To bolster its case this year, the shipping association commissioned time-and-motion studies to establish average productivity rates at each of the coast's 29 ports. The speed of each crane at each port was monitored in different circumstances: in daylight and at night, in sun and in rain.

Those rates, running between 25 to 30 containers per hour, could then be easily compared to crane speeds during an alleged slowdown.

PMA spokesman Steve Sugerman said that during slowdowns three years ago, crane speeds dropped to 15 per hour or less.

What happened this week was markedly different — sufficient work crews were not dispatched, and so fewer cranes were operated than the shipper wanted. The PMA and individual shipping lines argued the effect was the same. Still, there was a wide opening to argue about whether a slowdown actually happened or not.

"A slowdown is when you go to work and work slowly," explained Jay Luera, Secretary-Treasurer of ILWU Local 13, which represents nearly 5,000 longshore workers in Los Angeles and Long Beach. "You work to the safety contract. You follow the posted speed limit of 10 miles an hour. You don't work overtime. Maybe everybody takes their lunch at the same time."

Luera conceded that such tactics might have been used in previous years. But he insisted it didn't happen in Long Beach this week. "This year, we're not even considering that," he said.

Tom Warren, a veteran ILWU clerk and a Los Angeles port commissioner, said he knows what a slowdown looks like.

"You see nothing but trucks down the streets, lined up outside the terminals," he said. "Nothing moves as fast as normal. Guys don't drive so well. They might miss the pins (when setting containers down on yard trucks). People's problem-solving skills are suddenly, shall we say, diminished."

PMA spokesman Sugerman wasn't buying the union's argument. During Thursday's brinkmanship, he dispatched a video crew to the Stevedoring Services of America terminal, which was allegedly hit, and had them film idled cranes and trucks.

He offered another indicator of the union's intentions: its refusal to extend its contract with the PMA. "Slowdowns only take place when there is no contract," he said.

That's because when the contract is in force, an arbitrator can take up the matter and fine the union for staging a slowdown. Slowdowns are prohibited by the contract, but they are not illegal under federal labor laws.

The contract was due to expire July 1, but the union agreed to daily extensions until Sept. 2, when negotiations were briefly suspended. Talks resumed the next day, but the union has consistently refused to extend the contract since then.