The
International Longshore and Warehouse Union and U.S. West Coast
waterfront employers have agreed to take a 72-hour break from
negotiations to allow the union to attend “an unrelated negotiation” in
the Pacific Northwest.
The
six-year contract, which expired July 1, was be extended during the
break from 8 a.m. today and through Saturday, the ILWU and Pacific
Maritime Association said in a terse statement released last night. The
announcement came hours after the Teamsters union protested outside
marine terminals at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, raising
fears, which proved unfounded yesterday, that protestors would erect
picket lines and the longshoremen would refuse to cross the lines.
The
brief contract extension, "is good news, as it will continue all the
terms of the existing contract, will limit the ability of any of the
Locals to take their own job actions, and will allow the PMA to seek
arbitration if the ILWU Local in LA seeks to honor Teamster pickets this
week," Peter Friedmann, counsel to the Council of New England Companies
for Trade, said in an email this morning.
According
to the statement: "The parties have agreed to take a 72-hour break from
negotiations on a new coast-wide contract while the ILWU attends to an
unrelated negotiation taking place in the Pacific Northwest. During this
break, starting at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, July 8, through 8 a.m. on Friday,
July 11, the parties have agreed to extend the previous six-year
contract, which expired last week. The PMA and ILWU are negotiating a
new contract covering nearly 20,000 longshore workers at 29 West Coast
ports."
Cargo operations at the busiest ports in the nation continued unimpeded
yesterday despite Teamsters’ threats of an “indefinite strike” against
three harbor trucking companies. The Teamsters protestors distributed
flyers accusing harbor trucking companies of misclassifying drivers, but
they didn’t block access to the terminals.
