Dock Workers Reject Proposed Contract

A tentative agreement giving 8,500 dock workers from Seattle to San Diego a 13% raise over three years has been vetoed by union locals in San Francisco and Los Angeles who are angered over other provisions they say will cut their pay.

The bargaining committee of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union had recommended acceptance of the new contract, which would bring base pay to $22.68 per hour.

The ILWU said late Thursday that 52% of the votes favored the contract. It got 100% of the votes in some small port locals such as Bellingham, Wash., and Sacramento. But only 13.5% of the San Francisco votes and 25% of those in the Los Angeles-Long Beach local were in favor of the contract.

Under union rules, the contract is rejected if any local votes against it unless the overall margin of approval is 60%.

The vetoes could be overridden in a second vote the week of Sept. 16 that also requires a 60% overall approval margin. If that isn’t achieved, the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Assn., a trade group representing 100 ocean cargo shippers and unloading concerns, are expected to reopen negotiations.

According to trade data provider Summit Information Services in Seattle, West Coast ports accounted for $84.6 billion of the $198.4 billion in U.S. waterborne trade during the first four months of 1996, or nearly 43%.

However, speculation about what could be a crippling strike at West Coast ports is premature, spokesmen for both sides said.

“We’re a ways away from talking strike,” said Steven Stallone, a union spokesman. “We have all this process to get through. Even if it’s voted down again there’s no automatic strike.”

“There has been absolutely no threat of a strike. Work is continuing as normal at the West Coast ports,” said Terry Lane, a vice president of the shippers group. “It’s not unusual for the union to take a second vote on the contract.”

Lane said the sticking points were provisions that threaten to reduce pay for some crane operators in the Los Angeles-Long Beach ports and to phase out pay for travel time from the San Francisco dispatch center to the docks in Oakland, on the other side of San Francisco Bay.

A contract negotiated in 1987 went to a second vote before it passed, although the issues were simpler then and the first vote closer.

The negotiations were scrutinized with great interest by other union and business groups and economists.

Goods have been surging trade through the Los Angeles-Long Beach ports, now the nation’s busiest, and that has been a big factor in a recent regional economic recovery, which has offset the effects of post Cold War defense cuts.

Some shippers have threatened to take freight to Gulf of Mexico ports if costs grow too high in California, said Jack Kyser, an economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., a private business group.

“If the contract gets any richer, you could have some very strange things happen out there,” Kyser said. “You could kill the goose that laid our golden egg of trade.”