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By Richard Knee
If most, and maybe all, freight intermediaries had their way, the longshore unions would vanish, well, yesterday.
Even so, the new president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) found an attentive audience when he addressed the recent Western Cargo Conference (WESCCON), the annual gathering of the Pacific Coast Council of Customs Brokers & Freight Forwarders Associations (PCC), in Palm Springs, California.
For his part, union president James Spinosa spoke in conciliatory tones and said that improving productivity on the docks is a complex process because there are so many parts to the transportation system.
Spinosa headed the negotiating team that forged the ILWU's current three-year contract with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents most of the 100-plus employers at the docks in California, Oregon and Washington state. He unseated incumbent president Brian McWilliams in a hotly contested election last summer.
Describing himself as a "progressive thinker," Spinosa said he has more than once seen the state-of-the-art container-handling systems at German, Dutch and Belgian ports, and he agrees that mirroring their innovations, particularly expanding computerization, is desirable. In fact, both the ILWU and PMA have committees that are exploring the issue, he said.
"On our side," he added, "we have to be concerned as to the impact. We are concerned about people. How many of them would be displaced, and by what work force? Trying to find this middle ground is not easy. We know technology is here to stay. ...I'm in favor of exploring this technology, as we're doing now. I think the ILWU and the PMA are on target."
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