Longshore delegates to meet in Long Beach in July to weigh new labor contract

More than 100 West Coast longshore delegates are set to gather in downtown Long Beach next month for the first step in confirming a tentative six-year labor contract covering some 22,000 workers.

The caucus gathering will take place from July 17 to 21 at the Westin Hotel on Ocean Boulevard, and will include delegates from each of the labor union’s local chapters at 29 West Coast ports.

After that, the full rank-and-file West Coast membership of the International Long Shore and Warehouse Union will vote. That vote is expected to occur in late September.

The procedural details were outlined in a recent bulletin sent out to members by Greg Mitre, president of the Pacific Coast Pensioners Association for the ILWU.

This was the fourth contract negotiation process Mitre has taken part in, with talks starting on May 10, 2022. Negotiations took place in San Francisco and after a long, often-tense process, wrapped up late on June 14 — more than a year later.

Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su flew to San Francisco and spent three days with both sides as a final deal was hammered out.

Members of both the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents employers, must ratify the contract.

This was the longest negotiation stretch on record, Mitre said in a Wednesday, June 21, phone interview. The 2014 talks, which lasted 10 months, previously held that record, he said.

“I can tell you,” Mitre wrote in the bulletin to members, “it was a tough battle and we underwent some brutal negotiating sessions in the end.”

The delegates at the Long Beach caucus will examine the details of the tentative agreement and then send it on to members for the full ratification vote.

The details of the contract will be provided at during an Aug. 2 ILWU Southern California Pensioners meeting at the union’s Memorial Hall in Wilmington.

Specifics about the tentative agreement have not been officially released, but some points have been leaked and reported in various media outlets.

Mitre said he could not “confirm or deny” the information.

Those details, according to the Wall Street Journal, include a 32% salary increase over the life of the contract. That would be provided as a $4.62-per-hour wage increase in the first year, with increases of $2 per hour in each of the contract’s remaining five years.

A one-time $70 million bonus is also included in recognition of dockworkers who remained on the job during the coronavirus pandemic. That bonus will be divided equally among the members and retroactive to when the last contract expired 13 months ago.

Source: Orange County Register