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Expiring Master Contracts
Give Unions Enormous Leverage ... If They Seize the Moment
General
Transportation Strike Looming in 2008?
By MEREDITH SCHAFER
and CHRIS KUTALIK
IMillions of dollars worth of goods
sat unmoved on the docks of the United States' largest port,
Los Angeles/Long Beach, as port truckers, mostly Latino immigrants,
struck on May 1. Despite being organized only informally in small
networks, the truckers were able to use their position at a vital
point in the economy to multiply their power.
Let's skip ahead to 2008 and
imagine an even grander scenario. Instead of a small, determined
group in one locale mining a strategic position, imagine the
power of hundreds of thousands of workers who control the flow
of goods--from the docks to the airports to the truck barns and
package centers-using their leverage in one concerted, nationwide
effort.
Sound like fantasy? In the
spring and summer of 2008, master contracts will expire throughout
the economically vital transportation, warehousing, and distribution
industries, giving unions in those linked areas the rare, strategic
opportunity to make an impressive show of force against employers.
WINDOW OF
OPPORTUNITY
The Teamsters union, which
now includes newly merged rail workers along with their traditional
core of truck drivers and warehouse workers, will see its three
largest national contracts expire in 2008.
The National Master Freight
Agreement expires March 31, 2008, while the UPS master contract
and the National Master Auto Transportation Agreement (covering
carhaul workers) expire that same year. In all, the contracts
cover over 300,000 workers (238,000 at UPS alone)-most in areas
where a job disruption could have a tremendous economic impact.
Similarly, nearly all contracts
for major U.S. airlines expire in 2008 and 2009. Thomas Kochan,
an expert on labor relations in the airline, has called this
window a potential "Armageddon." Kochan believes that
the close expirations dates of these contracts will potentially
put unions in a "united front" in which employers will
find it more difficult than in past years to divide different
crafts and work groups in the industry.
ON THE DOCKS
But this potential convergence
is not limited to Teamsters or the airline workers. On the West
Coast, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's (ILWU)
coast-wide agreement with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA)
expires July 1, 2008. Major retailers fear disruptions. The last
employer lockout of the ILWU, in September 2002, resulted in
more than $147 million per day in economic damages.
The union faced an aggressive
employer offensive led by Stevedoring Services of America, the
largest U.S.-based terminal operating company. SSA is a provider
of everything from terminal operating and rail yard operations
to warehousing.
With SSA taking the lead, PMA
effectively undermined the union politically and in the press
in 2002. It brought employers (including giants such as Wal-Mart,
Target, and Home Depot) together in the West Coast Waterfront
Coalition. The level of coordination between retailers, shipping
lines, politicians, and the corporate media put the union in
a defensive position in 2002, signaling the need for a more comprehensive
strategy to defend their future contracts and control over the
work.
Since the Dubai Ports World
debacle, where the issue of foreign-owned companies controlling
U.S. ports was scandalized in the press, the many foreign-owned
steamship companies that make up the PMA are more vulnerable
to criticism from politicians and the media. Bruce Holte, secretary-treasurer
of ILWU Local 8 in Portland, Oregon, believes the union learned
an important lesson in 2002: "You need everybody."
In terms of the union's media and political strategy, he says,
"We are not playing catch-up this time, we're ready."
But beyond matching the employer's political and media prowess,
a real increase in the union's power over the long-term could
come through strategizing with other unions around contract expirations,
and new organizing in the logistics sector.
If they are indeed ready to
take on employers, dockworkers wield massive economic leverage.
Since 1980, the amount of cargo handled by West Coast ports has
increased 128 percent, and two-thirds of all containerized West
Coast imports (an estimated $500 million worth a day of the nation's
goods) come through the L.A./Long Beach port alone.
This increase in cargo volumes
puts West Coast dockworkers at a strategic chokepoint in a global
economy reliant on imported goods. Major retailers' increasing
use of just-in-time inventory schemes, which keep warehouses
stocked to the minimum and rely on timely delivery, makes them
particularly vulnerable to longshore disruptions.
How choked up are these points?
Consider this:
* The top 20 of the nation's
360 commercial ports, handle 80 percent of all imports and exports.
Of those 20, the two largest-Los Angeles/Long Beach and New York-handle
more than 40 percent of all imports.
* L.A./Long Beach further handles
two-thirds of all imports coming in containers on the West Coast-an
estimated $ 500 million worth a day.
* The Congressional Budget
Office estimates that a one-week disruption of the L.A./Long
Beach port would cost the whole U.S. economy $65-$150 million
a day. (Another study found that about $75 million was lost a
day at the port complex during the ILWU lockout in 2002.)
*Roughly a fourth of all U.S.
imports--$423 billion of goods--are shipped in by container ships.
One-sixth of its exports or $139 billion are exported in the
same way.
* The CBO study also found
that the lack of capacity of work sites off the docks such as
warehouses, distribution centers, and intermodal yards connecting
ports to trucks and rails was a large component of the current
import/export bottleneck.
LINING UP
AS A STRATEGY
Recent examples illustrate
how making use of nation-wide contract expirations can make--or
break--a campaign.
The United Food and Commercial
Workers (UFCW), for instance, missed a crucial opportunity in
late 2003 and early 2004 when at least 13 of the union's master
contracts expired in the grocery industry alone, covering close
to 190,000 workers. But the union failed to coordinate nationally,
dooming the California strike (Labor Notes April 2004)
and other scattered regional strikes in Ohio, West Virginia,
Virginia, and Missouri to fail. Wage and benefit cuts, along
with other concessions, followed in their wake.
In a more positive recent example,
UNITE HERE has tried to wage a full-court press against hotel
employers from coast to coast. After working for years to line
up contract expirations for many major cities' hotels, in the
summer of 2006 it launched a continent-wide contract campaign
called Hotel Workers Rising.
Though the results are not
all in yet, the hotel campaign reflects a strategic approach
that other unions would do well to follow (Labor Notes
October 2006).
SEIZING
THE DAY?
Potential power aside, the
64-million dollar question remains: are union leaders willing
and able to seize the moment?
Though he's spoken of the need
for more coordinated organizing and bargaining strategies, Teamsters
President James P. Hoffa has been criticized inside his union
for pushing for an early contract settlement with UPS-one of
the key pillars of the distribution side of the U.S. economy.
(Negotiators officially sat down at the bargaining table September
19.)
Fearing a weak deal, Teamster
reformers are making early negotiations a campaign issue in the
union's hotly contested October general elections. Beyond using
joint expirations dates to pressure employers, they believe that
early negotiations will also undermine other potential leverage
points at UPS.
Importantly though they also
project an alternative vision. "Representing workers in
ports, trucking and on the rails, our Teamsters union has a strategic
foothold in the chokepoints of the North American economy,"
Hoffa's reform challenger, Tom Leedham, thundered at this summer's
Teamster convention. "By mobilizing Teamsters members and
organizing the unorganized at these chokepoints, we can become
a union that truly has the power to move America or to shut it
down."
Ultimately a larger, comprehensive
strategy in transportation thus may rest on the outcomes of fights
for leadership and direction by labor activists. And like all
such questions hanging over the labor movement that one will
undoubtedly remain hotly contested down to the wire.
Meredith Schafer is a former member of ILWU Local 5.
She currently works as a freelance researcher for unions in Oregon.
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