After Union Uses Some Muscle

Baltimore ILA Tops Bow to Arbitrator, End Strike

On October 18, the leadership of International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 333 called off a strike that had shut down most of the Port of Baltimore. Dock workers had hit the picket lines three days earlier after voting 517 to 25 to reject a take-back offer from the stevedoring companies’ bargaining agent, the Steamship Trade Association (STA). In addition to hardlining it on the new local contract—which sets wages for handling cars and break-bulk cargo as well as all work rules at the port—the STA affiliates have been repeatedly violating existing guidelines in an effort to boost profits at the cost of workers’ safety.

One ploy has been to cut the size of work gangs handling containers and other cargo, putting longshoremen who already toil under deadly dangerous conditions at even greater risk from speedup. At the same time, the STA proposed stricter penalties against workers involved in vehicle accidents—that is, firing for the third offense—at the port that conducts the highest volume of automobile trade in the country. Strikers told Workers Vanguard that some Baltimore terminals had unilaterally slashed pay rates for loading and unloading automobiles.

The short-lived show of union strength in Baltimore came at a time when longshoremen across the country are under the gun, not least in the Pacific Northwest where grain exporters have locked out International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) members at two terminals. With local contracts open at three other ILA ports on the East and Gulf Coasts, the Baltimore strike had the potential to ripple beyond the city. The union bureaucrats, though, bent over backward to accommodate the bosses, halting the job action after an arbitrator ruled that it violated a no-strike clause in the ILA’s Maine-to-Texas master contract with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX). In fact, they not only submitted to the “cease and desist” order, which applied to containers and some vehicle cargo, but went one better and themselves imposed a 90-day “cooling off” period on the union during which they pledged that all cargo would move.

Here is revealed the purpose of supposedly “independent” arbitrators, whose basic role is to stop strikes and enforce class peace, all the better for the bosses to get their way. As a measure of their so-called partnership with the employers, the pro-capitalist union tops first accede to no-strike clauses in contracts and then roll over before the arbitrators who enforce them. When workplace disputes break out into open struggle between workers and the bosses, which side prevails is determined by their relative strength. Contracts merely constitute truces in the class war, and the main weapon that workers have is strike action. Wielding labor’s power in defiance of anti-labor laws and injunctions is what built the unions in this country.

Such a perspective is anathema to the labor bureaucrats, who subordinate the unions to the profitability of American capitalism and the political fortunes of the Democratic Party. Twice in the last year, the ILA tops scuttled the possibility of parallel strike action with the ILWU, leaving the West Coast longshore union to fend for itself. The first time was a gift to Obama in the run-up to last year’s elections. With the old master contract set to expire the same day as the ILWU master grain agreement, ILA head Harold Daggett extended it in September 2012 “for the good of our Country and Our President.”

At the same time that Daggett talked tough when it came to the master contract, the ILA tops were preparing to give ground on speedup and safety in the local contracts. The bosses first went after the union where it is strongest, in the Port of New York and New Jersey. An “anti-corruption” campaign by the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was rolled out against “no-show jobs” and union shop stewards said to be compensated for every hour of the day. In April, the New York Shipping Association succeeded in pushing through an agreement that introduced smaller gang sizes and unprecedented productivity commitments by the union tops.

In Norfolk, Virginia, the local contract was voted down twice before Daggett and USMX chief Dave Adam showed up to ram the deal down the throats of the union membership. The ILA locals still negotiating contracts, including Charleston and Philadelphia, had the rug pulled out from under them when the ILA International signed the master contract with its no-strike clause in August. Their position is further weakened by the acquiescence to the arbitrator’s ruling in Baltimore.

It is a boon to the bosses that pay rates for handling much of the cargo not shipped in containers, as well as gang sizes and other work rules for all cargo, are negotiated locally rather than in the master contract. In the spirit of drumming up more business for the employers at their home ports, ILA local leaders have long engaged in fierce competition that pits workers at different ports against each other jockeying for jobs. In 1999, the ILA granted a charter to Local 2066 in Baltimore, a group of longshoremen seeking to draw steel cargo lost to other ports back up the Chesapeake Bay by promising to work for less than Local 333. Such rivalry is poison to the unity and integrity of the ILA and has helped fuel the growth of non-union outfits. Its corollary on the global playing field is the ILA tops’ patriotic salute to American capitalism, which can only undermine international workers solidarity.

When the widening of the Panama Canal is completed, similar competition with ports worked by the ILWU may well sharpen. The ILWU’s recent exit from the AFL-CIO leaves the dock unions on both coasts more vulnerable to attempts to divide and conquer. Like the ILWU, the ILA is an increasingly isolated union outpost on the waterfront. The continued existence of the two as powerful industrial unions demands hard class struggle to organize the vast numbers of unorganized workers along the cargo chain, such as the heavily immigrant port truckers and warehouse workers.

In undertaking this fight, the unions will have to become champions of immigrant and black rights. This potential is shown in many port cities in the South, where ILA locals are an anchor for the black population and can provide a springboard for organizing across the region. Out of such battles to revitalize labor, a new leadership of the unions must emerge that strives not only to repel the attacks of the capitalist exploiters but to forge the workers party needed to end their rule once and for all.