International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) workers agreed last Friday to return to work for 90 days while negotiators work on a local contract that triggered a three-day strike last week at the Port of Baltimore. The Port of Baltimore closed when ILA members went on strike after voting 517-25 on Wednesday last week against the most recent proposal from the Steamship Trade Association.
The contract in question covers local workplace rules, pensions, and other port-specific issues, and is one of numerous East and Gulf Coast local agreements that supplement a larger coastwide master contract. The broader master contract covers wages, medical benefits, container royalties, and other coastwide issues at all East Coast ports and was signed last spring after nearly a year of contentious negotiations that included threats of a coastwide strike. Baltimore was one of several ports where negotiations on local contracts continued months after settlement of the coastwide master contract, and Baltimore has still not agreed to a local contract. Local contracts have been reached in every other East Coast port.
The halt to the strike came after an arbitrator ruled that the ILA walkout over the local contract violated the “no-strike” clause in the union’s coastwide master contract with the United States Maritime Alliance. Baltimore dockworkers resumed working cargo covered by the coastwide master contract after the arbitrator M. David Vaughn granted the Steamship Trade Association of Baltimore’s request for a cease-and-desist order.
Employers and the ILA had been watching the arbitration proceedings closely because of possible implications for how the master contract’s “no-strike” clause might be interpreted in future disputes over local contract issues.
