After three years of labor tension and court battles, shipping companies and the powerful dockworkers union this week will begin contract negotiations over basic working conditions and further modernization of America's West Coast ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach.
People in the shipping industry compare the issues on the table to those hashed out in the historic 1961 agreement that hastened the spread of technology and labor-saving innovations, particularly the use of cargo containers.
This time it is automation, computers and new rail projects that will speed cargo from ships to inland freight yards and storage areas.
The Pacific Maritime Assn., which represents shipping lines and terminal operators, maintains that the negotiations are critical to improving the productivity and dependability of the waterfront labor force.
Association representatives say they hope to engage in substantive discussions about the use of technology on the docks and ways to avoid repeating the scores of costly work stoppages that followed the 1996 labor contract.
"Our main issues are productivity and reliability," said Joseph N. Miniace, president of the Pacific Maritime Assn. "Shipping companies and union members must understand that the customer is the No. 1 concern. We don't want them looking at other means of transportation or other ports."
Among the issues critical to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are increases in pension and medical benefits as well as the union's jurisdiction--the number of port-related jobs that fall under its control.
Union officials say that if modernization continues, steps must be taken to preserve ILWU positions and expand the organization's jurisdiction beyond port boundaries.
The union contends that the organization lost jobs after the so-called mechanization and modernization agreement took effect almost 40 years ago.
"Employers must be made to understand that when they make technological changes, they must bring us along," said ILWU Vice President James Spinosa, the union's chief negotiator. "To live in yesterday's world will only prove to be disastrous."
Pact Would Affect 10,000 Workers
The maritime association and the union will begin discussing a new three-year contract for almost 10,000 dockworkers in Washington, Oregon and California. About 5,200 ILWU members work in Los Angeles and Long Beach, the largest combined port in the United States.
