How the West Coast Dockworkers’ Union Always Wins

T he negotiations for a new labor contract between the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union began on May 10. Now, they’ve been halted, and won’t resume again until June 1.

Bill Mongelluzzo of the Journal of Commerce reported that the ILWU was seeking to pause negotiations on Friday, without explaining its reasons for doing so. Yesterday, Mongelluzzo reported that the negotiations had, in fact, been suspended until June 1. “It remained unclear Monday why the ILWU asked for the break,” he wrote. “The union has not responded to multiple requests for comment, and the PMA is referring queries to the ILWU.”

The current contract expires on July 1. Both sides have already made clear that they do not believe a new agreement will be reached by then, and that negotiations will likely extend beyond the deadline. (It is common for this to happen in such negotiations, and the expiration of the current deal would not automatically trigger a work stoppage.)

Mongelluzzo speculates as to why the union would find it advantageous to delay talks:

In past negotiations, the ILWU was keen to allow the existing contract to expire because the “no strike” clause then becomes null and void unless both parties agree to extend the contract. During 2002 contract negotiations, the ILWU began work slowdowns in the summer and the PMA responded with an employer lockout. In 2014, the ILWU began work slowdowns in Seattle in late October and then moved the job action quickly down the coast to Oakland and Southern California.

The PMA and the ILWU set a tone of cooperation at the start of these talks, with a commitment to avoiding any kind of work stoppage. In a joint statement, the two sides said that they would negotiate “on a daily basis in San Francisco until an agreement is reached.” Yet only two weeks into negotiations, and a little over a month before the expiration of the existing contract, that vow has already been broken.

The Biden administration has made clear that it does not want to see any work stoppage during these negotiations. But it’s also no secret how the administration feels about organized labor. Biden has called himself “the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.” Ports envoy John Porcari has heaped praise on the ILWU in past public remarks. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh was a union president before he was a pro-union mayor of Boston.

The administration has combined those public political stances with a stated commitment to being an unbiased middleman should negotiations completely break down. It’s hard to believe that administration officials will set aside their career-long pro-union stances if they are forced to play that role, or that negotiators on either side actually believe that they would be neutral mediators. We’ve seen how a Democratic labor secretary has handled such negotiations before. In 2014, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez brokered a new contract between the ILWU and the PMA after nine months of negotiations had resulted in an impasse. Politico noted at the time:

Had Perez failed, the parties would have been called to Washington, and Obama might have felt compelled to use his authority under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to end the dispute. Such a move would have almost certainly favored management and angered organized labor at a time when it is already bristling at the president’s trade agenda.

In other words, when the labor secretary brokers the deal, even if he’s behaving in a way that’s “unbiased,” it redounds to the union’s benefit.

George W. Bush used the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows the president to intervene to stop strikes or lockouts that “imperil the national health or safety,” to order West Coast ports to reopen after an eleven-day work stoppage in 2002. The unions were furious, with Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO saying that the PMA was “getting their way and have the weight of the government behind them.”

This time around, it may well be the ILWU that comes out on top with the government’s unspoken backing. By delaying these negotiations and guaranteeing a period of time when the no-strike clause will not be operative before a new agreement is signed, the ILWU is keeping the strike option on the table, no matter what its leaders may say publicly.

The union knows that the labor market is extremely tight, which means labor doesn’t have to settle for management’s terms. It knows that Biden is highly unlikely to use Taft-Hartley to break a strike. It knows that if things get bad short of a strike, the administration is going to send in Walsh, who has made a political career out of championing organized labor. It’s hard to see how any of that would upset the ILWU.

The downsides of a work stoppage for the ILWU would be negative publicity and further supply-chain disruptions that could be blamed on the union. But the ILWU already has a reputation for playing hardball, and the union is part of the reason supply chains are snarled in the first place: Its steadfast opposition to automation has made America’s ports some of the least technologically efficient in the world, and its demands for lavish salaries and benefits have made American port labor extremely expensive. It doesn’t exist to move cargo; it exists to secure concessions for its members, like any other union.

For the ILWU, pausing negotiations also has the advantage of further entrenching the idea that avoiding a work stoppage equals success. Of course, avoiding a work stoppage is wonderful. But if negotiators have lowered the bar for success that dramatically, there’s no chance that any long-term improvements to supply-chain efficiency will come out of these negotiations. The just-avoid-a-stoppage approach favors the status quo, because the fastest way to “yes” would likely be an agreement that’s similar to the agreement that already exists.

And so, even though the last two years have shown us how disastrous America’s inefficient, outdated ports are for our economy, in all likelihood negotiators will come to an agreement that continues to benefit organized labor at the expense of the nation’s supply chains.