Accord Puts Some Jobs in Jeopardy

Shipping lines and union dockhands can both claim to be winners under the labor contract signed this weekend for West Coast ports. For at least one group of workers, however, the deal looks to be a total loss.

Under the tentative agreement, a few dozen nonunion planning jobs would be brought under the jurisdiction of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. And that means Sherry Goff and 30 colleagues may be out of a job.

The question still is open, subject to interpretation of the contract language by arbitrators, federal labor officials and possibly the courts.

That process is certain to be nasty, played out behind the scenes as larger changes on the waterfront, such as the implementation of labor-saving technology, move forward.

Goff works in the nerve center of Stevedoring Services of America, the largest U.S. terminal operator. In a Salt Lake City control room 750 miles from the ocean, she plans and tracks by computer the unloading of cargo containers from ships along the West Coast.

The ILWU has claimed these planning jobs for more than a decade, arguing that before computers moved the work inside, the tasks were performed on the docks by marine clerks with clipboards. The union launched an organizing campaign in the 1990s, and the planners at many shipping lines agreed to join.

But Seattle-based SSA fiercely resisted those efforts, and eventually moved all its planning jobs from California ports to Utah, a state with strong legal limits on union organizing.

Goff was part of that move. In 1997, she and her two young children packed up their home in Oakland and headed east. “It’s a whole different lifestyle,” said Goff, a 25-year SSA employee. “It’s cheaper to live, a better environment for the kids. There’s a lot of pluses to being here.”

Goff knew planning jobs again would be on the table, and watched nervously during negotiations between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Assn., which represents about 80 shipping lines and stevedoring companies, including SSA.

On Nov. 1, a breakthrough agreement was announced on the implementation of labor-saving technology at the ports, which paved the way for the accord reached Saturday night. That was a relief for retailers and manufacturers, which depend on the ports to move their goods.

But it left Goff with a lump in her throat because what made the deal possible was the PMA’s concession -- over objections of her employer -- that certain planning jobs would fall under union jurisdiction.

The union made it clear it does not want to represent the Utah workers. It wants the planning jobs for its own marine clerk members, and considers that to be a fair exchange for agreeing to technology that will cut hundreds of other clerk jobs.

Last Tuesday, Goff and her colleagues filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that this part of the tentative contract is illegal. “How can someone negotiate your job away?” said Goff, who voted against unionization when she was based in Oakland.

The Utah workers were aided by lawyers from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which has filed hundreds of lawsuits against unions across the country. Few have been successful.

The NLRB filing also was praised by SSA President Jon Hemingway. “We expect howls of protest from the union,” he wrote in a Nov. 19 letter to employees. “Nonetheless, we hope that we will be able to get clarification and resolution so that our people, whether affiliated with a union or not, can continue to perform their jobs.”

The PMA, in a rare split with one of its members, defended the contract clause before the NLRB, saying the company could continue to employ the nonunion Utah workers, even though their job functions would be transferred to the union.

To further complicate matters, the union filed its own NLRB charges Friday, claiming that SSA improperly sponsored the effort by its employees to void the clause in the contract.

Wayne Benson, a spokesman for the labor board’s Denver office, where the charges have been filed, said the case filed by Goff and her co-workers is considered the “highest possible priority.”