Many have suggested that President Obama “invoke his authority as the nation’s chief executive” to relieve the port congestion stemming from a contract dispute between the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. That authority rests in him invoking powers stemming from the Taft-Hartley Act which gives the President the ability to fix labor disputes that impact the national economy.
This is not the solution.
Taft-Hartley provisions were meant for strikes. The ILWU is not on strike. Taft-Hartley provisions clearly help the employer in contract disputes, and in no way, should the PMA be rewarded for their actions that clearly threaten the economy of our region, state and nation.
Longshore workers normally work the docks of Tacoma 24-hours-a-day, 360 days a year.
The PMA’s “lockout lite” of first cutting off night work and now holiday and weekend work has reduced our workforce of loading and unloading ships to a mere 32 of a possible 240 hours in the current 10 day span. Furthermore, it is not the ILWU’s fault that the PMA has mismanaged our docks, off-sourced chassis repair, and not trained enough workers for the job.
This contract dispute is ultimately about foreign-owned companies determined on destroying a workforce with complete disregard to the impact to our community, the thousands of workers at the port and the tens of thousands of workers across Washington State whose livelihood depends on international trade. They only care about their profits and the power to destroy 80 years of negotiated contracts and safety agreements that protect workers from the second most dangerous job in America.
The PMA and its member companies’ greed is profound. They have lied about our wages and contract negotiations to the press. Two K-Line officials were just sentenced to federal prison for price-fixing and Maersk Lines was just fined $8.7 million in November for false documents regarding military shipments to Afghanistan.
This contract dispute cannot be equated to a struggling industry with a union unwavering in their demands. This is about companies based in Taiwan, Denmark, England, Japan and China not worried about the safety and welfare of their workers or the short-term consequences of their actions, but the greed that drives them to put our economy at risk.
The longshore workers at the Port of Tacoma are vital members of our community. We volunteer as youth coaches, serve at food kitchens, lead PTA’s, and hundreds of others ways we are part of our community, including the nearly $50,000 we raise every year at Christmas in presents for hundreds of kids that would not have anything at Christmas. We’ve been recipients of the City of Tacoma’s Destiny Awards and last month awarded the Gold Star Award from the Tacoma Public Schools for our actions helping low-income youth in the community.
The ILWU and the PMA are close on a contract. After nine months of negotiations, we only have a few issues left. Despite having a federal mediator at the table, the PMA has been intermittently coming to the negotiating table and now, last weekend, failed to place an order for longshore labor at the docks of Tacoma as over a dozen ships sit idle at the docks or in Commencement Bay.
If our West Coast ports were bombed by a foreign country or terrorist group, the nation would rally and there would not be enough little American flags or lapel pins in the marketplace to meet the demands. Instead, a consortium of foreign companies have essentially done the same thing, and yet, combating corporate greed isn’t as clear cut as fighting a war. Calling for a solution involving Taft-Hartley and rewarding greedy, foreign-owned companies for what they have done to America and her workers is irresponsible. Our workers and our community deserve better,
This weekend, President Obama ordered Labor Secretary Tom Perez to help facilitate an ending to these deliberations. We welcome this step, and hope this hopes find a solution that gets our docks moving again.