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World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
PMA Management Myths, Union Facts
Leaflet produced by the SF Bay Area Portworkers Solidarity Committee
Management has put out their "spin" on the lockout of 10,500
dockworkers in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).
What are the real facts?
Management myth #1: The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) claims
that the union is refusing to accept new technology that has been adopted
20 years ago everywhere else.
The facts: The ILWU has agreed to the new technology, even
though this would lead to the elimination of at least 600 union jobs. All
the union asked in return is that the ILWU retain the right to organize
the new jobs as they are created.
Management myth #2: Every one of the clerks on the job will be
guaranteed in writing of another job when they are displaced from their
current job. The union is being bullheaded in refusing to accept this.
The facts: Offering to find new jobs for displaced clerks
simply dodges the issue. What management won't say is that the new
nonunion jobs created through the new technology will be used to outsource
the work of unionized workers. For example, the technology can be used to
create a logistics system that can link a factory floor in the Far East
with an inventory system used by a retail chain or a manufacturing plant
in the U.S. to support "just-in-time" delivery of inventory.
Over time this would give management the ability to move much of the ILWU
's work into large distribution centers far inland - and away from the
ILWU and unions in general. That's why the West Coast Waterfront Coalition
- which includes huge importers like the Gap, Target and Payless - is
working closely with the PMA in pushing these anti-union demands.
If this sounds far fetched, consider the experience of the Teamsters union
as the result of deregulation in the trucking industry. In the 1970s, the
Teamsters' National Master Freight Agreement covered some 500,000 workers.
Today it's just 85,000. The main reason is that unionized companies like
Consolidated Freightways used deregulation to move their prize assets into
nonunion companies like Con-Way. Consolidated Freightways went bankrupt
and liquidated on Labor Day, and 15,500 Teamsters lost their jobs. But
Con-Way and other companies spun off from Consolidated Freightways are
today highly profitable, technologically advanced providers of freight
delivery and sophisticated logistics systems. And they are nonunion.
You can see the same trend of outsourcing decently paid union jobs to
low-wage, nonunion suppliers in the auto industry and in aerospace at
Boeing. It's one of the main tactics that Corporate America has used to
drive down union membership and strength.
And this isn't the first time that dockworkers have faced this kind of
assault by management worldwide. In recent years we've seen it in
Liverpool, England; Rotterdam in Holland; in Australia; and in Charleston,
South Carolina.
Management myth #3: The ILWU really wants to retain control of
jobs and the ports because they are simply stuck in the past and unwilling
to do what's necessary to raise their productivity.
The facts: By any measure, ILWU dockworkers - and longshore
workers in any port - are some of the most productive workers in the
world. These workers' ability to load and unload ships rapidly and
efficiently is the reason why shippers have massively increased imports
through West Coast ports.
ILWU members handle goods worth $300 billion every year - equivalent to
one third of the entire Gross Domestic Product of the United States. If
the ILWU were really so inefficient, would the world's shipping lines and
importers have made West Coast ports the economic lifeblood that the have
become?
Management myth #4: ILWU members are overpaid, making between
$80,000 to $157,00 per year.
The facts: Lett 's break it down. The New York Times
reported - using management's figures - that 6,463 longshore workers earn
$82,895 per year after working 2,006 hours per year, based on a schedule
of a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks per year. Those hours are already some of
the longest in the country - well above national the average of 1,978 per
year. Management reports that 1,583 clerks are paid $118,844 per year, and
they work 2,662 hours per year. They report that 616 walking boss/foremen
are paid $157,352 per year - but somehow forget to say that they work on
average 3,130 hours per year-more than 30 percent higher than the national
average.
If these workers are paid well, it's because they worked long and hard to
earn it - taking time away from their families, their friends, their
communities to keep these ports working, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
And given the enormous profits made by both shippers and importers on the
goods ILWU members handle, just who is complaining that dock-workers are
paid to much? And at a time when CEOs across Corporate America have been
caught looting their companies for tens or even hundreds of millions of
dollars each while workers' pensions plans lose billions, it takes a lot
of nerve for these employers to whine about "overpaid" workers.
After all, we know now that former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski spent $15,000
for an umbrella stand in the shape of a dog, $445 for a pin-cushion, and
$2,200 for a trash basket.
ILWU members are proud of the wages and conditions that they've achieved.
Many have sacrificed their lives - not just in the great waterfront strike
of 1934 that founded the union, but in just this year alone, five workers
have been killed on the docks. A miscalculation in handling a container or
operating a crane can cripple or kill someone on the docks in a matter of
seconds.
What's more, the ILWU and unions across the U.S. offer an inspiration to
working people to get organized and stand up for their rights
collectively. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, the proportion
of Americans in poverty rose significantly last year, for the first time
in eight years.
Today, 32.9 million Americans are impoverished --11.7 million of them are
children. That's an overall increase of 1.3 million poor people since the
year 2000. In addition, about 1.4 million more people were without health
insurance last year, driving the total to 41.2 million people without
coverage, or 14.6 percent of the population.
Corporate America likes to say that the workers who have succeeded in
organizing themselves to fight to improve their conditions are paid too
much. But what we should really be addressing is why working people in
this country are working harder for less. We say that unions are the best
way workers have to defend and advance their interests, and the ILWU and
dockworkers around the world are proud to be part of that struggle.
This fight for justice on the docks is a fight for working people
everywhere!