By Marcy Rein
The IBU members who protect the Southern California coast walked off the job in a five-day unfair labor practice (ULP) strike June 23-27 against Marine Spill Response Corp. (MSRC). They say MSRC’s labor law violations not only deny them their rights as workers but threaten the coast as well.
“We’re saying the company broke the law by not recognizing and bargaining with our union, and we need our union contract so we can provide more reliable service,” IBU member Tim Parker said. Parker and his co-workers work as oil spill responders, containing and cleaning up marine oil spills.
The strikers picketed in front of MSRC’s office across from the CUT terminal in the Port of Long Beach, at the Carson office and at the BP terminal and dock where the company keeps its boats. Only three of the 18 responders working in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach crossed the line. Longshore workers honked all day as they passed the port locations, and some stopped by to walk the line.
“It felt good to let the company know how we felt,” responder Chris Sogliuzzo said. “It showed we could stand up for something we believe in.”
Until July 1, 2004, the responders had worked under an IBU contract with Clean Coastal Waters (CCW), the company that since 1972 had handled oil spill response along the coast and 200 miles out to sea from just north of Malibu to the Mexican border. Then MSRC took over CCW. It hired all but one of the CCW workers and continued offering the same service using much of the same equipment. In doing so, it met several of the key criteria the NLRB uses to determine that a company is a legal “successor.” Labor law requires successors to recognize and bargain with the unions in place at the companies they take over.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a complaint against MSRC June 22 for its failure to recognize and bargain with the union. A hearing on the complaint before an NLRB administrative law judge has been set for Sept. 13.
“After hearing all the evidence, the judge will then issue a ruling, which may be further appealed by all sides,” MSRC CEO Steve Benz told workers in a company-wide e-mail.
While CCW focused on local oil spill response, MSRC handles a whole range of hazardous substance spills and natural disasters all over the world. It claims it doesn’t have to recognize the IBU because its 18 Los Angeles/Long Beach responders form part of a 235-person workforce and can be dispatched or “cascaded” wherever they’re needed.
Ever since MSRC took over CCW, the workers have said this attitude and the company’s safety practices put the coast at risk.
MSRC’s three people in San Diego and 18 in LA/Long Beach now cover an area stretching all the way up to Big Sur—more than double that covered by CCW.
The responders say proper staffing for the LA/Long Beach Harbor area is three teams of six people. In October 2004, MSRC cascaded five responders from Southern California to Louisiana. With these five gone, others sick and on vacation, and the crew two people short to start with, Southern California only had five responders left to crew three boats more than 100 feet long and six smaller boats 18 to 44 feet long.
MSRC says it could bring in contractors if needed, but contractors lack familiarity with MSRC’s equipment and, in some cases, with the tides, currents and geography of the harbor.
“Bringing in a contractor to do our job would be like bringing a guy off the street into a mechanic shop and telling him how to fix something step by step,” said Sogliuzzo, who has worked for one of the contracting companies. “Contractors are just good for bodies. “The actual deployment of our gear is less than 50 percent of what we do. We do corrective maintenance, preventive maintenance, training—it takes all kinds of training to run our equipment.”
MSRC has done far less safety and equipment training than CCW did.
“When I started at CCW we used to take the boats out and deploy the gear regularly to keep our skill level up,” responder Garrick Gilham said. “There are so many types of gear that if you don’t practice, you forget the steps. MSRC doesn’t have us do that.”
Over the last year MSRC has swallowed up local spill response cooperatives all along the West Coast, and it is on course to secure a monopoly in the industry. This makes its business practices a concern to people far from Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor, IBU National President Dave Freiboth said.
“We have an opportunity to raise these issues coastwise,” Freiboth said. “This is more than a classic labor-management relationship. It’s about stewardship of the environment. An organized workforce gives our members protection to speak up when they see problems. We’re part of the effort to maintain environmental standards.”
