Catherwood LibraryILR School

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) called off a lockout at Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports yesterday when the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) sent full crews of equipment operators to the Stevedoring Services of America stations at the two ports (see WIT?s for August 28 and 21, and July 22 and 18, 2002). The PMA set a lockout deadline after the ILWU failed to dispatch full complements of workers to the two terminals starting this week, accusing the union of engaging in a slow down in an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations---a tactic the association had promised to respond to with lockouts. The union vehemently denied the accusations of engaging in a slowdown saying that it simply had not had enough workers to deal with a backlog of shipping, and both sides have said that industrial action is still a very real possibility even as the director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service asked both sides to put an end to brinksmanship.