Labor dispute at West Coast ports ends with pay hike for dockworkers

The union and the Pacific Maritime Association, an industry group for port operators and shipping companies, announced they had reached a deal in a joint statement published late Wednesday night, June 14. If both parties ratify the agreement, they would end a bitter labor dispute that had temporarily shuttered some of North America’s most important ports of entry.

The new contract includes a wage increase of 8 to 10 percent for the first year, according to a person briefed on the details who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The deal also includes retroactive pay at that increased rate for the hours that dockworkers worked during the eight months without a contract — a major point of contention in the final stages of negotiation.

Delegates from each of the union’s chapters will convene for one week in July to approve the details of the contract, which will then be sent to the Pacific Maritime Association to be ratified in August.

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement that recognizes the heroic efforts and personal sacrifices of the ILWU workforce in keeping our ports operating,” said Adams and Pacific Maritime Association President James McKenna in a joint statement. “We are also pleased to turn our full attention back to the operation of the West Coast Ports.”

The ports at Los Angeles; Long Beach, Calif.; Oakland, Calif.; and Seattle serve as critical gateways for container ships bringing imports from Asia. They collectively process hundreds of billions of dollars in cargo each year for products such as agricultural goods, manufacturing components and consumer electronics.

Business groups, including the National Retail Federation, have called those supply lines “crucial” to their operations as they urged the White House to broker a deal.

Pay and automation concerns

The biggest long-standing flash point for the union and port management concerned automation — namely, the extent to which port managers can bring in machinery to do jobs currently performed by longshoremen.

But the subject of pay more recently became an unexpected sticking point. Workers wanted the new contract to include retroactive pay provisions to compensate them for the time they worked without a contract

The Biden administration dispatched acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to help broker a deal, leading to near-daily conversations with negotiators, people close to the talks said.

Su spoke with both parties over the phone every day for several weeks before flying to California on Sunday to discuss negotiations in person, a representative of the Labor Department told The Washington Post. On Monday, she organized meetings with both parties separately, and by Tuesday, both sides came together one more time before the deal was finalized Wednesday.

Source: The Washington Post

To read the original piece, access: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/15/west-coast-ports-labor-contract/

Labor dispute at West Coast ports ends with pay hike for dockworkers

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