ILA-USMX come to terms on a new six-year master contract extension

Two months after the International Longshoremen’s Association, the largest union of maritime workers in North America, and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), an alliance of container carriers, direct employers, and port associations serving United States-based East and Gulf Coasts, came to terms on a tentative agreement on new six-year contract, the parties announced yesterday that the new contract is now official.

ILA and USMX said that the contract is subject to ratification by ILA members at ports from Maine to Texas and by the USMX membership, adding that the current USMX-ILA Contract expires on September 30, 2018.

“We have reached a tentative agreement on a six-year Master contract that is beneficial to both sides,” said Harold J. Daggett, ILA President and David F. Adam, Chairman of USMX, in a joint statement.

ILA and USMX said that roughly 200 ILA Wage Scale delegates unanimously approved the terms of the new agreement, which follows two-days of Master Contract negotiations in Delray Beach, Florida.

The agreement culminates months of tough negotiations between the ILA and USMX,” the statement read. “Both sides hailed the agreement that was reached months ahead of the expiration of the current pact.”

While the ILA and USMX statement said that details of the tentative Master Contract agreement were not made available, a separate ILA statement indicated that this six-year contract extension will bring generous pay increases, landmark protections against job-killing fully automated ports, and labor peace and stability through September 30, 2024.

“This is a great day for the ILA and our union membership,” said ILA President Daggett in the ILA statement.  “ILA members covered under this ILA-USMX Master Agreement can now look to a bright future where their salaries will increase and the threat of job loss from fully automated terminals, semi-automated terminals and automated equipment is eliminated.  Our national health care plan, MILA remains the strong and our members will benefit from increases in Container Royalty. Our ILA Wage Scale Committee can be very proud of the contract they helped produced and our membership ratified. They put in long, oft-times grueling hours to bring home a contract that I think represents the best collective bargaining agreement in ILA history and maybe even in the entire history of Organized Labor.”

In March, a letter to ILA’s Daggett and USMX Chairman and CEO David Adam from various shipper groups stressed the need for the two sides to come to a deal.

“Reaching a contract extension before the current contract expires will provide supply chain stakeholders with the certainty they need for their operations,” the letter stated. “Supply chain disruptions arising out of previous contract negotiations are well documented. Such disruptions can have enormous adverse economic impacts. For example, disruptions on the West Coast caused marked shifts in business operations that benefitted East and Gulf Coast ports. Much of that new business has stayed on the East and Gulf Coasts, but could just as easily shift back to West Coast gateways, where a long-term contract is in place.”

And it added that even the threat of a disruption could have a negative economic impact on the Gulf and East Coast ports, especially if shippers and beneficial cargo owners believe that operations would have been slowed or shut down during peak shipping season in the fall.  As was the case in 2012, they noted that some industries would begin implementing contingency planning as early as this spring to ensure that cargo is not disrupted during peak shipping season in the fall. In the absence of negotiations, those contingency plans will definitely affect business at East and Gulf Coast container terminals, they said.

What’s more, this deal reached an agreement well in advance of the September 30 expiration date of the current deal, something that did not occur when the current deal was reached in 2012.

That negotiation process was marred by acrimony on both sides, which required months-long extensions and assistance from the United States Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

The main issues between the ILA and USMX in 2012 centered around how the ILA had to negotiate all Master Contract issues with the ILA Wage Scale Committee, which ILA President Harold Daggett said in an August 2012 letter to USMX leadership is a democratically-elected committee that USMX had declined to address despite Daggett’s overtures to do so.

Another issue had to do with technology. USMX’ Capo maintained that the ILA is demanding that management guarantee a job for any worker even if new technologies eliminate a need for that position. USMX also noted that the current Collective Bargaining Agreement at that time mandated that both sides negotiate over the impact new technology might have on the work force.