Brian McWilliams, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, was classically himself last December in Seattle.
The World Trade Organization was trying to meet while thousands of protesters turned the City by the Sound into a war zone. Having gotten his powerful union to shut down all West Coast ports for the occasion - with it most U. S. foreign trade with Asia -McWilliams joined the marchers and delivered a fiery speech denouncing the evils of globalization.
It was a vigorous and heartfelt critique of free trade - never mind the fact that his union represents 10,000 dockworkers who owe their jobs and six-figure incomes to international trade. It was McWilliams being himself, an old-school labor leader from San Francisco, a cauldron of the labor movement, who has left few ideological issues untouched during his six years as ILWU president. But whether it’s freedom for Mumia Abu Jamal, the Philadelphia activist on death row for killing a cop, or displaced dockers in Liverpool, McWilliams’ union can be counted on to weigh in.
But with his orientation toward the ideological, many say, McWilliams has lost touch with his rank and file, particularly younger members. They aren’t interested in windy speeches about what’s happening in Philadel-phia or Liverpool. They’re motivated less by a sense of social justice than by the desire to preserve their paychecks, which average more than $100,000 a year for fulltime ILWU dockworkers. They recognize that the ILWU’s long-term future depends on productivity.
The clash between the rank and file and their leadership in San Francisco, while nothing new for the raucous ILWU, has defined Mc-Williams’ tenure and changed the union in ways that affect its dealings with shippers, terminals and ocean carriers. The nation’s retailers and manufacturers are increasingly dependent on just-in-time supply chains from Asia. Much of their cargo moves through West Coast ports and from there to consumer markets in the Midwest and East Coast by rail or truck.
Understanding and dealing with the ILWU, whose members unload every container on the West Coast, has therefore become an important matter for large companies and their trade associations. When the ILWU calls a work stoppage, ships are delayed, trains are missed and stores and customers don’t get supplied. Members of the Pacific Maritime Association, the management group that negotiates with the ILWU, say a container ship sitting idle in a port can cost a carrier $50,000 a day.
McWilliams is unapologetic. He says the ILWU is determined to carry on a militant tradition that dates to the union’s founding amid the violent San Francisco waterfront strikes of 1934 - and that if others don’t like it, that’s their problem.
“This is our legacy. This is our ongoing history,” he said in a recent speech. He recently urged employers to simply “look the other way” when the union appears to violate the contract’s no-strike clause by calling a work stoppage over social-justice issues.
This isn’t the first time there’s been friction between the ILWU’s leadership and its rank and file. Even the late union founder Harry Bridges, who is accorded iconic status within the ILWU, was sometimes jeered during speeches to Southern California locals. McWilliams’ predecessor, David Arian, a firebrand on international issues, was tossed from office after a single term.
Now that tension is confronting McWilliams head-on. He is running for a third term this summer, and the question of whether the ILWU leadership spends too much time on non-workplace issues will be one of the key issues raised.
McWilliams is expected to be challenged by James Spinosa, an ILWU vice president from Southern California. Whether McWilliams will retain the ILWU presidency is unclear. Though he won a second term in 1997, he’s had a rocky tenure.
In 1996, the union rejected a three-year contract McWilliams had negotiated with the Pacific Maritime Association. The union ratified the deal on the second ballot, but the vote and the widespread disruption that accompanied it created the impression that McWilliams was an unpopular leader with little control over his membership.
Two years ago, the Southern California locals, which account for more than 60 percent of the ILWU longshore division’s membership, spearheaded
a successful “no-confidence” vote against McWilliams.
He survived the vote, but emerged further weakened when his opponents were able to get Spinosa named as head of the longshore division - a position traditionally held by the ILWU’s president. That meant Spinosa, not McWilliams, led the negotiations with the PMA for the 1999 contract, which was ratified on the first vote.
McWilliams’ 1997 re-election came only because of his popularity among sugar, hotel and other non-longshore workers who comprise 75 percent of the union’s total membership. He lost the longshore division vote.
Support from the non-longshore workers - whose ranks include bicycle messengers in San Francisco and bookstore workers in Portland, Ore. - may be enough to pull McWilliams through to re-election. Though McWilliams is not a polished orator, many ILWU members seem to like his relaxed demeanor and approachable style.
His likely opponent, Spinosa, is a slim, intense man who keeps his own counsel and is most comfortable at intraunion politics. But Spinosa is no less militant than McWilliams. When he was president of Local 63 in Los Angeles-Long Beach, Spinosa led a series of job actions that helped give the ports a reputation for labor volatility that still exists.
In contrast with Williams, Spinosa is concerned almost exclusively with dockworker issues. In that respect, he’s closer to the views of the new leaders of the ILWU locals who are gaining influence in the union.
The emergence of that new generation of ILWU leaders is perhaps the biggest challenge to McWilliams and his style of leadership.
In recent months, the differing agendas of the ILWU’s San Francisco headquarters and some of the union’s Southern California members have become increasingly apparent.
While McWilliams expounds on the evils of multinational corporations, leaders of ILWU locals in Los Angeles-Long Beach, Northern California and the Pacific Northwest are focusing on automated dispatching, container dwell time, flexible work rules for crane operators and competition from the aggressive Port of Vancouver, British Columbia.
The young leaders see a changing transportation industry marked by just-in-time delivery, automation, and fierce competition for West Coast cargo and ILWU jobs.
“These are young guys with good ideas,” said Mike Mitre, newly elected president of Local 13, the Los Angeles-Long Beach longshore local that is the union’s largest.
With a perceived leadership void at the top of the union, the local leaders are taking full advantage of the autonomy granted to them by the ILWU constitution. They’re willing to negotiate with employers in their ports to improve productivity as well as working conditions. They believe shutting down the entire West Coast, as the union has done repeatedly in the last decade, is harmful to their interests.
In Southern California, Local 13’s Mitre and Local 63 Vice President Peter Peyton publicly criticized McWilliams for closing West Coast ports during the WTO meeting.
The Southern California local officials aren’t alone in their discomfort with the WTO action. “I may take heat for agreeing with Mitre and Peyton, but I do agree with them,” said Scott Reid, president of Local 19 in Seattle.
Since taking office this spring, Mitre and Peyton have acted independently of headquarters by offering a plan to ease congestion at terminals.
Mitre noted that as many as 20 percent of the containers sit on the docks for a week or more before they are moved. Concerned about the negative perception of the ports by shippers and carriers, the Southern California officials say they want to move containers in and out of marine terminals more quickly.
The local unions are proposing that ILWU drivers move the boxes to off-dock storage sites. That would relieve trucker waiting times and congestion at container terminals - and possibly create new ILWU jobs.
Marine Terminals Corp. is the first terminal operator to try the plan. The company in May set up a near-dock site adjacent to the Yang Ming terminal in Los Angeles. The union agreed to more flexible work rules that would encourage use of ILWU drivers using terminal equipment instead of contracting the work to outside trucking companies.
“I think it’s going well,” said Local 63’s Peyton. Productivity took a big jump in the second week, and should continue to improve as workers become familiar with the system, he said.
Although the locals will find it hard to convince employers to extend the Southern California prototype to true off-dock container stations manned by ILWU members, waterfront employers like the fact that ILWU leaders are trying to improve productivity.
“Mitre and Peyton are a breath of fresh air,” said Dave Adam, chief operating officer at Marine Terminals Corp.
Mitre said the ILWU rank and file are serious about improving productivity in West Coast ports. “We are the best longshore union there is. We believe we’re the best in productivity,” he said.
Employers remain unsatisfied. They’re sometimes exasperated by the ILWU’s democratic structure, which includes various levels of authority at the local, coastwise and international level that can cancel each out.
Employers say they never know when they have a deal that will stick. “Who’s in control? Who’s really in charge?” asks Joseph Miniace, the PMA’s president.
For example, during last summer’s contract negotiations, the PMA and ILWU lawyers agreed upon a proposal to improve the arbitration process. The proposal was submitted to the ILWU caucus, which killed it.
Also last year, the PMA and ILWU locals in Southern California designed and installed an automated dispatch system that will get workers to their jobs on time. Local 13 voted overwhelmingly against implementing it, and the costly system has been sitting idle since then.
Until the union accepts big-ticket items such as automated dispatch and paperless gates, which exist at other ports, the ILWU locals will not convince employers that they are serious about improving productivity, Miniace said.
“These issues have to be addressed immediately. Our customers are demanding it,” he said. “We have to have efficiencies. The ILWU hasn’t offered any efficiencies yet.”
