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ILA report: Baltimore local threatened with trusteeship for resisting concessions
by Carl Biers

ILA Local 333 in Baltimore is being threatened with a trusteeship by the International Longshoremen's Association because its officers have resisted demands for concessions from the world's largest paper company, says an executive board member of the local. John Blom, a 26-year member of the local, says the union is in a strong position to resist the concessions demanded by UPM-Kymmeme, a $10 billion company that has threatened to use nonunion longshore workers or relocate to another port if Local 333 does not agree to reduce its labor costs before the contract expires in September, 2004.

The local has been negotiating with the paper company since December and has agreed to some demands, but not enough for the ILA leadership, which has earned a reputation for feeble resistance to employer attacks on East Coast longshore worker standards. At a trusteeship hearing in New York on May 7, an ILA executive board member, Gerald Owens, told the Local 333 leadership that if they did not recommend UPM's final offer to the membership the following week, the local would be placed in trusteeship. If a trusteeship is imposed, the local bylaws can be suspended and a contract signed without approval of the Local 333 membership. Federal law presumes trusteeships valid for the first 18 months, during which it is difficult, but not impossible, for members of the local in trusteeship to have it overturned.

The main company demands are for a sharp reduction, from 15 to 9, in the minimum crew size and an increase in the number of start times. UPM is offering a dollar an hour increase per year of the contract.

No master break bulk master agreement

Local 333 is vulnerable to threats of moving or going nonunion because of the ILA's failure to establish a coastwide master agreement for break bulk (noncontainerized) cargo and its inability to stanch the growth of nonunion longshoring. Unlike the ILWU, a separate international that represents longshore workers on the West Coast, the ILA has no master or even regional agreements for break bulk, which makes up a sizable part of the cargo in Baltimore and other East coast ports. Without coastwide standards, companies can threaten to abandon one port for another, pitting local against local, a practice known as whipsawing. The results can be disastrous. Conditions are driven lower and lower, and locals become accustomed to viewing each other as competitors. Blom fears the erosion of standards, while limited to break bulk, sets a bad precedent for containerized cargo, the mainstay of the ILA, which worked under a coastwide master agreement. ILA spokesperson James McNamara did not return several AUD phone calls.

The situation was not always so dire. Until John Bowers took control of the ILA in the mid 1990s, the union operated on a policy of "one port on strike, all ports on strike" which prevented whipsawing over wages and working conditions. Ports still competed with one another over productivity and safety standards, says Blom, but wages and manning requirements were taken out of the equation.

Standards are further eroded by the growth of nonunion longshoring operations in many East and Gulf coast ports, also represented by the ILA. Nonunion longshoring operations, which pay as little as $8 per hour, account for 15% of the work in the Port of Baltimore.
Nevertheless, Blom says the local is in a strong bargaining position. He points to several factors that would keep the company in Baltimore using ILA labor. UPM currently uses docks that are publicly owned by the Maryland Port Authority which forked over major subsidies in 1999 to attract the $10 billion paper products giant, including an agreement to build a $10 million, 250,000-square foot storage warehouse, now nearly completed.

Blom says Maryland law requires that the ILA perform all work on publicly owned docks. Furthermore, UPM's docks are just a few hundred feet from rail access and only a bit further from Interstate 95, the main northeast coastal artery. It would take years, says Blom, for UPM to build enough storage space elsewhere, and they are bound by their agreement with MPA and the ILA contract to Baltimore until September 2004. The company is eager to lock in concessions over a year before their contract expires because, says Blom, at contract time, it will have little leverage if workers at their main port of entry are on strike. Any attempt to go nonunion could be met with a campaign to tap the militant solidarity of international dockworkers in Europe and elsewhere, whose job actions in support of ILA Local 1422 in Charleston, SC forced Nordana, a major Danish shipping company that had gone nonunion in the late 90s to return to the union fold.

The conflict raises a larger issue: Now that the ILA has permitted nonunion longshoring to gain a foothold, what is its strategy for maintaining standards? Blom fears that if the ILA simply gives in bit by bit, employers will inevitably drive down working conditions lower and lower. The diminishing standards for break bulk will eventually undermine the master agreement for containerized cargo, the mainstay of union longshoring. What angers him most is that his local is in a strong position to hold the line and is willing to fight, but may be forced into concessions, a trusteeship, or both by an international leadership that has no strategy for resistance and has made little or no effort to organize the growing nonunion sector.

Other articles on the ILA:
Reform movement spreads in ILA (12/04-1/05)
Longshore workers nearly reject master contract (9/04-10/04)
Question and Answer: RICO monitorship in ILA? (9/04-10/04)
Who will police the Longshoremen's ethics code? (1/04-3/04)
ILA Baltimore local threatened with trusteeship (5/03-6/03)
Nine years without a contract in ILA Lake Charles Local (3/03-4/03)
Reformers win majority in harbor workers local 333, ILA (8/9 2002)
AUD at Charleston ILA meeting (News 4/02)
Charleston Longshore unions win major victory 2/3 2002
"Charleston Longshore workers lead battle for reform." 8/9 2001
Links to Longshore worker websites

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