Port labor talks resolve key issue Friday, September 6, 2002 By PAUL NYHAN SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Negotiations over a new contract for dockworkers took a dramatic turn yesterday, as participants agreed on one of the thorniest issues, health care.
Four days after talks broke down, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and shippers tentatively agreed to a health care package that maintains benefits, with a few alterations, according to employers.
The agreement represents a breakthrough for negotiators, who have struggled for four months to formulate a new contract for 10,500 West Coast dockworkers.
But both camps say they have a long way to go before they agree on a final contract.
"I think we have a lot more work to do," Jack Suite, director of contract administration for the Pacific Maritime Association, the negotiating arm for shipping concerns, said yesterday.
Now negotiators will try to overcome perhaps the greatest obstacle to an agreement -- how to modernize West Coast ports, while ensuring that dockworkers keep their jobs. In the past few days, negotiators had stumbled over health care issues.
The tentative agreement emerged yesterday, four days after union leaders left the bargaining table Sunday, saying they could stage work slowdowns, while the association promised to lock out employees in response.
The two sides resumed talks Wednesday.
However, the threats remained yesterday, even as negotiations continued.
The union declined to agree to a short-term contract. In the past, the two camps extended the old pact in short increments.
That means the union can do "anything that we want to do to try to put economic pressure on the employers," said Steve Stallone, a spokesman for the longshore union.
The union has no immediate plans, but "there is strategizing going on," Stallone added.
The Port of Seattle was operating at its usual pace, spokesman Mick Shultz said yesterday.
Despite the looming threats, some observers were heartened by the latest progress.
The stakes are huge in the contract talks.
If the ports shut down, either through a lockout of workers or a strike, tens of billions of dollars in cargo would be stalled.
Such a massive disruption of commerce could send an already shaky national economy reeling.
"It sends a message, to me, anyway, that in fact the two sides have met and that stonewalling is not occurring," said Robin Lainier, executive director of the West Coast Waterfront Coalition, representing shippers and other interests.
Amid the signs of progress, both sides cautioned that a final deal was nowhere near.
"This is the first step in a long road to an agreement between the ILWU and the PMA," the union said in a statement.