Cargo Business Newswire

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Global impact of strike at Baltimore port affects contract talks

In the six months since a 3-day dockworker strike at the Port of Baltimore caused shipping lines to divert their cargo to other ports, the cost of the disruption and its global ripples have become key issues in current labor negotiations at the port of Baltimore.

The International Longshoremen's Association Local 333 and the Steamship Trade Association of Baltimore remain at a standoff in the same local contract dispute that triggered the October strike.

In January a federal mediator ruled that the ILA local violated a "no-strike" measure in the master contract that regulates container cargo at U.S. East and Gulf coast ports, ordering the local to pay shipping lines and port operators almost $3.9 million in damages. However, he also left some leeway for some other resolution.

The local went on strike over work rules and a prospective local contract that covered cars and other break-bulk cargo. Other ILA workers at the port honored the picket lines, shutting down the port.

ILA officials want to bargain down the damages. Dennis Daggett, ILA Atlantic Coast district president, recommended that Local 333 members reject the "best and final" local contract offered by the STA in a vote Feb. 10, in a bid for union leaders to use the outstanding contract as leverage to reduce the damages, which Daggett said would be financially devastating to the union. On Wednesday, he held a meeting with hundreds of Local 333 members to discuss where he and other union negotiators stand with the damages.

ILA spokesman Jim McNamara said officials could not comment on pending negotiations.

"They are still involved in trying to help Local 333 and help Baltimore with the whole negotiating issue, and of course the issue of the award," McNamara said. "It's still hot and it's still ongoing."

Michael Angelos, president of the STA, said in an email that the STA "is confident that we will be successful working along with United States Maritime Alliance," which represents the lines awarded damages, "to settle the arbitrator's damage award."

For more of the Baltimore Sun story: baltimoresun.com