At a time when it is common knowledge that the run-of-the-mill gate clerk job can be done by a machine as the truck rolls by at 40 miles per hour, and directly after a negotiating session where the employers were trying to capitalize on this fact, this seems an odd concept to bring up.
The underlying stength of any contract is its jurisdictional claim. The underlying stength of the whole ILWU presence on the Pacific Coast is the one Coastwise contract agreement. Clerk and boss jurisdiction is entirely dependant on longshoremens’ jurisdiction
Any idea of somehow further splintering that arrangement should be coming from the employers, the folks who would so obviously benefit by such an effort.
Separate the Longshore Division into entities that would then have the opportunity to sell each other out, and what do you think would happen?
As a hint you might consider that the clerks, who comprise roughly 14% of the Division membership, somehow manage to take home roughly 28% of the wages generated by their common contract with the longies. (This might make some of those at the upper end of this food-for-thought-chain consider the SURVIVAL implications of an honest effort towards parity in that common contract with those on whose backs they ride so luxuriously)
frats,
ole
ps. So long as ANY skill rate in the Division; longshore, clerk or boss, is based on a % of the basic wage, someone is riding on the back of the lowest paid brother or sister in the system. An injury to one ... better not keep him from carrying ME?
