Two months after a tentative contract settlement was reached between West Coast dockworkers represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and port owners represented by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) (see WIT for Nov. 25, 2002), the dockworkers overwhelmingly ratified the proposal. Close to ninety percent of those who voted approved the historic six-year contract which had earlier gone to an eighty-member caucus for a recommendation vote (Dec. 9, 2002. Raising pensions by over fifty percent, and wages by eleven percent over the term of the agreement, the contract also guaranteed that management would not pass increased health-care costs on to workers, and placed new jobs created by technology under union representation in return for the dockworkers' acceptance of job eliminations due to new technology.
See NANCY CLEELAND., Los Angeles Times, January 22, 2003