Allen,
My suggestion was that the steady men check back into the hall as long as we had no contract agreement. I’m not against steadies. I am a steady at the Matson terminal and I like being steady. I felt and I still feel that as long as the employers and the P.M.A. are not willing to extend the last contract, as we have done in the past, I would be very wary in giving my good labor to them. For what ever reasons parasite Joe had for not extending the contract, I feel it was done so the employers would avoid paying retroactive pay to us for the period the I.L.W.U. was without a contract. This are just my feelings and thoughts. They have no factual background. I feel the P.M.A. has reasons why they took this line of dealing with the I.L.W.U. I’m also 100% sure time will tell us the reason why. Hopefully we will have some recourse to address the problem when it becomes apparent.
In response about section 9.43 and section 14 we have both steady crane drivers, skilled mechanical equipment operators and power equipment operators in the LA/LB ports. I don’t understand the problem you’re referring to in your letter. Please tell me about it. I was registered in 82 and my father who was registered in 51 is dead so I have no one to talk to about what happened in 69. I do know George Kavakas in on AOL but I don’t know his address. I’ll have to ask him next time I see him which I expect will be soon. Hopefully Local 13 will have their stop work meeting soon and we’ll have ours at the same time.
Here in LA we don’t have walking bosses and take offense at being called walking bosses. A “walking boss” is a member from the longshore local who has taken a bossing job for the day (an elevation) or is the “gang” leader of break bulk gangs. Here in LA we have a ship boss over the whole operation, a hatch boss who is over one hatch or against one container crane and a dock boss for each crane or hatch. We also in addition have “lashing” bosses when conditions call for it, like on a finish up or new start. All are from the Foreman’s local. We can elevate when there are no Foremen available and we take them from only “class A” men, not “B” or “permit” men. No offence, these are just the rules in LA.
I have no information as to if we foremen in LA did discuss the issue of having 2 walking bosses per crane as the men in Frisco wanted. Maybe one reason would be that Local 13 cannot negotiate the Foremen contract.
Eddie Mondor
Local 94, 34835
