WASHINGTON, D.C. — Standing together in support of 11,000 longshoremen who have been locked out of their jobs at West Coast ports, the Executive Committee of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department (TTD) today united behind a strong statement urging the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) to end its lockout and return to the bargaining table.
On September 29, the PMA locked out workers represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), a move the TTD said was based upon “trumped-up charges of a work slowdown” and that “threatens both the success of the collective bargaining process and what little vitality remains in our nation’s economy.” The TTD statement asked the Bush administration to “look to the PMA and demand that it stop holding the economy hostage to this ill-advised lockout.”
The statement contended that the PMA has been using “its political clout with the Bush administration and the economic resources of multi-national corporations to advance an agenda that seeks to out-source union port jobs overseas under the guise of technology improvements, and destroy everything the ILWU has fought for on behalf of generations of West Coast port workers.”
The 35 AFL-CIO transportation unions who unanimously adopted the statement called upon the PMA to end the lockout and “go back to the bargaining table to discuss the important issues facing these workers and America’s ports.”
For a copy of the statement, visit www.ttd.org
TTD represents 35 member unions in the longshore, maritime, aviation, rail, transit, trucking, highway, and related industries.