Members of Alaska Longshore Division Unit 223 turned out in force to support the APL Dutch Harbor dispatchers' demand for union recognition. Photo by: Dan Parrett.
When the dispatchers at the APL terminal in Dutch Harbor, Alaska demanded union recognition March 7, all 25 longshore workers on the job that day stood by them.
"The more people we have, the stronger we are," Alaska Longshore Division Unit 223 Vice President Randall Baker said.
The three APL dispatchers were the last non-union workers at union terminals in Dutch Harbor, the world’s number one seafood port.
"This is a deep water port between two continents at the base of the richest fishing waters in the world," Unit 223 President Skip Southworth said.
ILWU workers there not only load and unload ships, but drive trucks between the docks and the town’s processing plants. The APL dispatchers work 12-hour days routing the trucks and handling export documentation and other office clerical functions. One works half-time as a dispatcher, half-time as an administrative assistant.
"Some days you have five drivers on the road. You have to have a mental map of where each of them is all the time," dispatcher Amanda McConnell said.
They work for $15 an hour with no medical benefits in a town where milk costs $6 a gallon and the nearest hospital is a $1,200 plane ride away. They have no job security, because APL hires them as temps.
"I’ve been there almost two years and I’m still a temp," dispatcher Michelle Price said.
The company kept saying it was trying to get them health benefits, but by mid-February it became clear these were empty words. On March 7, the union called terminal manager Brian Sewell and said they needed a meeting right away.
With the longshore workers literally standing behind them, the dispatchers let Sewell know they wanted to join the ILWU. International Organizing Director Peter Olney delivered a letter from the union telling the company to respect the dispatchers’ rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the right to organize.
"Sewell looked like he’d been hit by a Mack truck," Baker said.
Sewell scurried off to call higher-ups at APL. By press time, the company still had made no response.
"The union boys I work with on a daily basis are in and out of the office every hour on the hour," McConnell said. "They check in on all three of us all the time to make sure we’re okay. Now we’re just waiting to see if the boss is going to give us what we deserve," she said.
—Marcy Rein
