(The UCLA Daily Bruin posted the following article by Charlotte Hsu on its website on February 13.)
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — With last year’s port lockout behind it and a new six-year contract, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union is looking to prepare for the rough waters that still lie ahead.
Peter Olney, former ILWU director of organizing, and David Arian, former ILWU president and current president of the Harry Bridges Institute, spoke Tuesday afternoon at UCLA about issues the ILWU now faces. The two shared perspectives on last year’s negotiations, as well as insight into what the ILWU is doing today.
The negotiations between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, an organization of shipping companies that controls 29 West Coast ports, were fundamentally different in their design than typical negotiations, Arian said.
“We started on May 13 (2002) negotiating this contract … the PMA would not negotiate with us,” Arian said. “There was no negotiating that took place from the day we started to the day we settled the contract.”
Part of the change, Arian said, could be attributed to the fact that retailers are more powerful than ever as a force in maritime economy.
“This contract was the first contract where maritime capital was no longer the dominant force in determining the outcome,” Arian said. “We were negotiating with the West Coast Waterfront Coalition … all the retailers headed by Walmart.”
Joe Radisich, the policy director for the Los Angeles branch of the ILWU, said the PMA formed alliances with retailers and the Bush administration in an attempt to force a pre-designed contract on the workers.
“The Labor Department attorney came out to negotiations … he laid out these scenarios. ‘We’ll invoke Taft-Hartley … we’ll replace you with the navy,'” Radisich said. “When it was done, he said, ‘by the way, don’t let anybody know I’m telling you this.”
The PMA tried to use the port lockout to cripple the union financially, and after the lockout ended, the PMA took the ILWU to court on claims that the workers were slowing down production. The ILWU emerged victorious, with evidence that the workers had kept production at the usual level.
A contract was eventually brokered, Olney said, but only after months of bitter struggle between the union and the PMA.
“Big battles and social conflicts like the lockout on the West Coast last fall are great instructors,” Olney said, referring to the negotiations as a “wake-up call.”
Olney and Arian said one lesson the union learned was that it needed to form stronger alliances and that it could not rely only on itself in the future. A union with some of the highest-paid workers in the nation, the ILWU developed an attitude that separated themselves from other workers, Arian said.
“Our membership as a result of the lockout … learned a valuable lesson that you’re never untouchable and you can’t win by yourself,” Arian said. “We reaffiliated with the AFL-CIO … we never really needed anybody else’s help before.”
Olney said forming new alliances was especially important in a world where economics happens increasingly on a global level. Both he and Arian said the ILWU will spend the next six years strengthening alliances on both a national and international level, as workers working on all the global ports have something very important in common with the ILWU they work for the same companies.
“You’ll see a different ILWU … a regeneration of our union,” Arian said. “The changes have to be developing a port-by-port relationship with the key ports in the world.”
The ILWU will also strive to work more with the mass media, which was dominated by corporate views last year, Olney said.
“You would have sworn we were about to hit economic Armageddon … there would be no toys under the trees at Christmas,” Olney said. “The ILWU was being painted as the grinch who stole Christmas.”
The port lockout, as portrayed by the media, Arian said, gave the impression that the workers were at fault.
“The media kept saying it was a strike throughout the whole struggle rather than a lockout,” Arian said. “A total distortion of reality.”
Both Arian and Olney stated that one of the most fundamental goals the union will be striving to reach in the future is to maintain jurisdiction over the ports.
A point of conflict during last year’s contract negotiations was that the PMA wanted to move new jobs created by technology out of union control. To have union members working these jobs, Olney said, is crucial to the survival and power of the ILWU.
“We need to understand work that has anything to do with the loading and unloading of cargo,” Olney said. “The union needs to view that work as work and workers that need to be organized. Employers desperately resist the organization of workers because they understand the implications.”
Olney said the ILWU has played a crucial role in acting in support of the working class worldwide, and that its continued existence is of great importance to workers everywhere.
“There is no question that the preservation and strength of the ILWU is absolutely crucial to labor,” Olney said. “A strong ILWU is a strength and pillar for the whole labor movement.”
The event was sponsored by the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations and the UC Institute for Labor and Employment.