Office clerical workers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach ratified a new contract in late February that covers 450 members of Local 63’s Office Clerical Unit (OCU). The workers won their contract after striking for 8 days from November 27 to December 4, 2012 because employers refused to curtail the outsourcing of good jobs.
Solidarity was central
The strike victory was possible because of a powerful show of solidarity from 10,000 ILWU members at Locals 13, 26, 56, 63 and 94 – along with support from other union members and non-union workers, including port truckers, who honored the picket lines.
International union support
Local 63-OCU asked for help from the ILWU International Union more than a year ago. International President Bob McEllrath assigned Vice President Ray Familathe to assist the Local with negotiations that continued during the strike. “It was important for employers to understand that the ILWU International was supporting these members,” said McEllrath.
Outsourcing threat
The predominantly female Local 63-OCU workforce spends most of their time on computers doing logistics planning work that is closely monitored by management and easily outsourced to non-ILWU locations in other states and countries. “They can outsource jobs with the push of a button to Texas or Taiwan,” explained ILWU International Vice President Ray Familathe.
No strike-breaking injunction
When the strike started, employers refused to bargain seriously because they were lobbying the Obama White House and hoping to break the strike with a Taft-Hartley injunction. In the end, employers didn’t get their injunction and had to negotiate a settlement with the union that included new outsourcing restrictions.
Jobs vanish to Costa Rica
Outsourcing controls were a critical part of the new agreement. During the previous contract, one company transferred work from the Harbor-area to Costa Rica, transforming a formerly minor operation with a few office workers into a bustling new facility with cubicles for 100 employees – many doing work that had previously been performed by ILWU employees in the Harbor area. The workers in Costa Rica were ordered not to talk with their better-paid counterparts in Los Angeles – and threatened with termination if they made contact with ILWU members.
Employer double-cross
While the outsourcing issue had festered since the contract expired in June of 2010, the problem went back further, to the depths of the 2008-2009 recession. That’s when companies pleaded for “flexibility,” claiming they needed relief to remain solvent. Local 63-OCU agreed to ease staffing requirements then to help the companies during the hard times, but the companies refused to return the favor when the economy recovered – and there was no “snap-back” provision in the contract to restore the status quo. Employers took full advantage of the relaxed staffing requirements during those three years to outsource 51 full-time positions – more than 10% of the workforce. With employers refusing to limit outsourcing, and another 70 jobs likely to disappear in the coming years without controls, OCU members decided they had no choice but to strike.
Politicians choose sides
The strike revealed which politicians were willing to stand with workers – and which ones were more comfortable with employers and big business lobbyists. U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer issued a disappointing joint statement with a sub-headline that screamed: “Closures of Ports During Holiday Season Could Hurt the Economy of the Los Angeles Region and Nation.”
In fact, there was little or no impact on the holiday season because most of the seasonal goods had been delivered long ago. And the economic impact of the strike was widely exaggerated. But claims that the strike was “harming the economy of the Los Angeles Region and Nation” were used to prod pro-corporate White House officials closer to imposing a Taft-Harley injunction.
Billion dollar baloney
Business lobbyists, along with many reporters and politicians, repeated the false claim that the strike was costing the local economy “$1 billion a day.” The figure came from a reporter who misunderstood the comments of economist Jock O’Connell, who was stunned to see his own misleading figure go viral. O’Connell quickly issued a clarification and tried to correct the error, but it was too late to control the hype that was fed by big business lobbyists and politicians who used the figure as a dramatic talking point – and reporters who unknowingly included the phony figure in many of their stories.
De-bunking a myth
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik devoted a column to de-bunking the bogus billion-dollar figure, along with other employer myths that he saw circulating in the media, including some in his own newspaper. Hiltzik explained that the value of goods moving through the ports may amount to roughly $1 billion per day – but the value of those goods didn’t become worthless because of the strike, which merely delayed deliveries for a week or so. The cost of those delays could eventually be estimated, but it was very small compared to the “billion dollar-a-day claim,” and had no more than a tiny impact on the national economy.
Some stood with workers
Several members of Congress weren’t fooled by the employer hype and took a courageous stand by affirming the efforts of clerical workers to save jobs from being outsourced. Congress members Janice Hahn, Judy Chu, Linda Sanchez, and Grace Napolitano called on both sides to reach a settlement – while expressing concern over the outsourcing of good jobs. Similar sympathetic statements came from Congress member-elect Alan Lowenthal, State Assembly member Bonnie Lowenthal, and others. Janice Hahn also made a special effort to visit with workers on the picket line, as did City Council member Joe Buscaino who expressed concern about the outsourcing problem on radio interviews.
Message control
After several days into the strike, the union began sending a clear, consistent message that explained the conflict in terms the public could understand and support: “clerical workers are standing up to save good jobs that support working families in our community. We want the good jobs at the port to stay here and we want the outsourcing to stop.” A team of Local 63OCU members were quickly trained to deliver the union’s message to millions of TV viewers, radio listeners and newspaper readers. Member Trinie Thompson conducted interviews with the NBC Nightly News, the Los Angeles Times and FOX national news. Members Sal Lopez and Maggie Ladesma did television news interviews in Spanish that reached millions. Member Pin Tse reached out to the Chinese language media.
Reaching a settlement
As the strike neared the one-week mark on December 3, both sides edged closer to an agreement when the companies finally agreed to put controls on their outsourcing. The final deal took another 12 hours to finalize, but was reached shortly before 11pm on December 4 with a joint media event hosted by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who cut-short a South American trade mission to assist the negotiations.
ILWU International Vice President Ray Familathe said “this fight came down to saving good jobs for the entire community, but it was difficult because we were dealing with powerful multi-national shipping companies, 21st-century technology, and an outsourcing problem that’s been out-of-control in America for decades.”
“This victory was possible because of support from the entire ILWU family and the strong backing from the Harbor community,” said ILWU International President Robert McEllrath, who praised the unity and solidarity of union members, their families and community supporters.