Negotiations between the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) begin tomorrow to reach a new collective-bargaining agreement. The current agreement expires on July 1.
The PMA is a membership organization of 70 companies at 29 West Coast ports. It negotiates labor agreements on behalf of its members, which include the terminal operators. The ILWU is the labor union that represents dockworkers at all of those ports.
Past negotiations have been challenging, and there have been work stoppages before. In 2002 and 2014, days-long stoppages led to significant delays. With West Coast ports already extremely congested, a work stoppage this year would be worse than ever.
Some shippers have been anxious. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association sent a letter to President Biden and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh in March urging them to make sure there is no work stoppage.
Edwin Lopez for Supply Chain Dive writes that both the PMA and the ILWU have been emphasizing cooperation going into the talks. In a joint press release today, they said, “Both sides say they expect cargo to keep moving until an agreement is reached.” Kuehne + Nagel, one of the world’s largest freight forwarders, also sees things as being “much calmer” than the last negotiations.
However, Lopez notes that both sides also expect negotiations to go beyond July 1. That’s been normal for the last few contract cycles (in 2014, negotiations took nine months). Just because a deal is not reached in time does not mean that work has to stop.
So far it seems that automation, as usual, will be a major sticking point in negotiations. The ILWU is generally opposed to many forms of automation because they could cost union jobs. The PMA wants more automation because it makes ports more efficient. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are two of the least efficient major ports in the world, and more automation would help improve them.
Lopez gives an example of how this tension is already developing:
On Thursday, the employers’ association released a report outlining the benefits of marine terminal automation. The report cites two terminals at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports as case studies of how the technology could affect volume and jobs. The terminals’ use of automation starting in 2015 helped the ports stay competitive and drew in cargo volumes. And as cargo volumes rose, so did labor hours.
The ILWU did not delay in countering the report. By Friday, the union had emailed out a statement arguing automation had cost jobs and efficiency at the overall San Pedro Bay port complex.
The Biden administration has not kept any secrets about its feelings toward organized labor. Biden has styled himself the “the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history” and ports envoy John Porcari has made sure to praise the ILWU specifically in public statements.
Over the past two years, the inadequacies of our ports have been front and center. The costs of congestion have been borne by producers and consumers alike. Our technologically backwards ports are in large part a result of treating them as jobs programs instead of transportation facilities.
The goal of a port is not to create the “good-paying union jobs” that the president often likes to talk about. The goal of a port is to move goods. As technology develops, people have invented better, more efficient ways to move goods, and our ports need to be able to implement those new ideas without running up against labor agreements. Right now, in many cases, they can’t.
While it would be good to get through negotiations without a work stoppage, that’s the bare minimum for calling the negotiations a success. If the ILWU gets its way in opposing more automation, these negotiations will be a huge missed opportunity to make long-term improvements to our West Coast ports.