ILWU must get real

As noted in our news section last week by my colleague, Jeff Berman, the Ports of Los Angles and Long Beach are back on track to handle Peak Season volumes once again. But Southern California shippers will be keeping an eye on how labor/management negotiations are going before committing to any long-term strategies at these key ocean cargo gateways.

Office clerical workers and waterfront employers will resume their talks tomorrow. And while both sides report that some progress was made over the past weekend, a new contract may still be a distant goal.

Which begs the question: why would handsomely-compensated office workers walk off a job in today’s fragile economy?  They also tried to place pickets at several terminals to keep dockworkers from doing the heavy lifting, but a local court ruling put an end to that.

The Office Clerical Unit of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 may be right in objecting to some outsourcing of information technology, but its resistance to embracing new market realities will only undermine its future.