The battle ahead after ILA’s port shutdown

PICKETS SHUT down seaport operations outside New York and Philadelphia for a second day September 29 over a union-busting effort by food giant Del Monte, but work resumed that evening pending the results of negotiations set for October 7. It was the biggest dockworker job action on the East Coast in more than 30 years.

The pickets were set up September 28 by members of International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) Local 1291 when terminal operator Leo Holt moved the work unloading Del Monte Fresh Produce Co. goods to a facility staffed by low-wage employees working under terms of a sweetheart contract with an independent union.

If Holt, a longtime antagonist of the ILA, and Del Monte get their way, as many as 200 ILA jobs would disappear.

Many workers saw the Holt-Del Monte action as a probe to test the strength of the ILA in advance of the master contract that's up for negotiation in 2012. That's why Local 1291 picketers found a ready response not only on the Philadelphia-area docks along the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, but also at the big ports in Elizabeth and Newark, N.J. ILA members of other locals refused to cross the picket line, as did Teamsters, who refused to pick up goods from warehouses.

The employers--who include some of the biggest shipping companies and terminal operators in the world--responded aggressively. They obtained a temporary restraining order from federal district Judge Dickinson Debevoise in Newark ordering the workers to return to the job and threatening to seek penalties of $1 million a day on ILA locals that failed to comply. Terminal operators called the action an "illegal strike."

Harold Daggett, executive vice president of the ILA, denied that the action broke the law. "Members from Philadelphia were upset about 200 people losing their jobs because Holt is trying to bust the ILA," he told the Journal of Commerce. "They came up here [to the New York-New Jersey area] and put up a picket line, and the men here chose not to go across. No union man wants to cross a picket line."

But the pickets continued a second day until the employers agreed to drop their effort to obtain those penalties and negotiate over the Holt-Del Monte issue. On the bosses' side of the table will be the New York Shipping Association and the United States Maritime Alliance, which together group all the heavyweights of the shipping industry.

The ILA International will apparently try to use pressure from other employers to push Holt and Del Monte back into line. And as container carriers and terminal operators struggle with a backlog, they'll certainly think twice before provoking a similar job action.

The question is what the ILA's terms of an acceptable settlement would be. The ILA International proposed, and members of ILA Local 1291 eventually accepted, an offer to Holt and Del Monte to slash labor costs by more than $5 million, including a cut in wages by as much as a third. The South Jersey Port Co., a quasi-governmental port operator, kicked in with millions of dollars in concessions of its own.

But Holt and Del Monte weren't after concessions. They want a chance to get rid of ILA labor altogether.

THIS ISN'T the first time Holt has taken a shot at the ILA. In 1994, the company tried to pit Teamster Local 676 against ILA Local 1291 by using cheaper Teamster labor at a Holt-owned terminal in Gloucester City, N.J. When the AFL-CIO ruled that the Teamsters couldn't take the ILA's work, the workers in Gloucester City left the Teamsters to found Dockworkers Union No. 1, an independent group that continues to work for wages well below that of the ILA.

Two years later, Holt went after the ILA again. He pulled out of the local employers bargaining group, the Philadelphia Marine Trade Association, in an effort to impose severe concessions on the ILA at his operation at Philadelphia's Packer Avenue Marine Terminal. The union pushed back with a three-week strike that forced Holt to rejoin the employers' group and accept the master contract that had been negotiated with the ILA.

Now Holt has expanded his Gloucester City operation, and Del Monte is obliging his request to move its 75 annual fruit shipments to that location. Union-busting is standard procedure for Del Monte, which is notorious for the murderous anti-labor repression that's taken place for many years at the company's operations in fruit-exporting companies.

The company is no friend of the ILA either. At the Del Monte-dominated port in Manatee, Fla., the company tried to create a nonunion operation in 2003. The ILA was able to secure the work, but to do so agreed to a contract that cut the pay and benefit of younger workers.

The port shutdowns, though, show that the ILA has the muscle to stop both Holt and Del Monte from going nonunion. Many leading ILA activists, such as those in the Longshore Coalition reform group, believe that the concessions offered to Holt and Del Monte should be pulled off the table, too. If the local accepts steep wage cuts, other employers will demand similar givebacks when talks begin on the next master contract.

For now, the ILA has let stand its call for a boycott of Del Monte Fresh Produce Co. With sufficient support, this could give the union additional leverage to fight for good union jobs at a time when organized labor needs to draw the line against aggressive employers.

Ken Riley, president of ILA Local 1422 in Charleston, S.C., summed up the mood in his union: "There is a feeling out there that we can't afford to lose this one."