Union Relations Are Changing On Puget Sound Waterfronts

For 60 years, the powerful West Coast Longshoremen’s Union controlled the docks in Seattle and Tacoma, securing handsome wages and decent working conditions for members.

But deregulation, technological advances and international business all mean changes in the relationship between the union and employers - changes that lower costs for consumers who so far have subsidized the high cost of moving cargo to the Pacific Rim.

International trade makes up about 20 percent of the state’s economy, providing thousands of port jobs and injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy. Seattle and Tacoma combined have become the second-largest container port in North America, after Long Beach, Calif.

To protect Seattle’s place in the market, the Port of Seattle invested millions of taxpayer dollars in state-of-the-art container and rail hubs that can meet demands for speedier loading and unloading of cargo.

Smooth relations between the longshoremen and the employers are essential if these new hubs are to pay off.

Publicly, that relationship is defined by friction over high union wages and employer efforts to speed production. Privately, some employers cut side deals with individual longshoremen, giving them extra pay to curry favor and divide the union.

“The employers are trying to create divisions in the union with the ultimate aim of getting concessions,” said Kandi S. Kandi, a Local 19 crane operator and a longtime union official. “The employer wants higher production with the same number of workers. They want to work you like a sprinter for the whole eight hours.”

Pacific Maritime Association officials, who represent shipping and stevedoring companies, say their goal is an efficient operation without work slowdowns or stoppages.

Disputes over production have heightened since July, when a new labor contract was adopted that has prompted random slow-downs up and down the coast.

“This is the same struggle that has continued for 60 years,” said Steve Stallone, spokesman for the ILWU in San Francisco. “It’s the class struggle. They try to get more out of us and we try to get what we consider is fair compensation.”

The West Coast Longshoremen’s Union is among the nation’s most powerful labor organizations. Rank-and-file members earn an average $65,000 a year.

But mechanization and increased container shipping have thinned the ranks of West Coast dockworkers from 25,000 in the 1970s to 8,000 today. During the same period, the volume of cargo passing through West Coast ports has tripled.