ILWU Southern California members rallied outside the Borax plant in support of Local 20. Photo by Bill Orton.
By Bill Orton and Steve Stallone
Health care cuts and creeping co-pays hit an ILWU contract in the L.A. Harbor last month as the workers at the Borax processing plant there were accepted concessions in their coverage to retain their jobs.
ILWU Local 20 covers just 83 workers who toil at the Borax plant in Wilmington, turning raw borates into products and preparing bulk shipments out of one of the last privately-owned berths at the Port of Los Angeles. As their June 17 contract expiration date approached, Local 20 members knew they were going to be in for some tough bargaining. Their employer also owns and operates the borax mine in the Southern California desert and had pushed for and won similar concessions in 2004 from the ILWU Local 30 miners working there.
“This was the toughest negotiation I’ve seen in 30 years of bargaining,” Local 20 President Gary Harvey said. “The company never budged on their health care concession demand.”
In 1967 the Borax company was sold to Rio Tinto, one of the biggest mining companies in the world, with operations on every continent except Antarctica and a reputation as aggressively anti-union. With that purchase, Rio Tinto became not only the employer of both locals, but also the supplier of nearly half the global demand for refined borates, key ingredients in fiberglass, glass, ceramics, detergents, fertilizers, wood preservatives, flame retardants and other products.
The corporate representatives came to the table asking for more than just health care cuts—they wanted cuts in long-term disability and sick leave provisions too.
Local 20 mobilized and held demonstrations at the harbor with the support of other ILWU locals—longshore Local 13, clerks’ Local 63, foremen’s Local 94, port pilots Local 68 and warehouse Local 26. But just before the contract expired the company placed a last, best and final offer on the table. The negotiating committee recommended against it and on June 17 the rank and file rejected it by a 58-17 vote, effectively giving the negotiators strike authorization in hope of putting pressure on the employer. It helped a little in the long run.
The local’s negotiators got an extension on the contract for a week while they continued talking. Then International President Jim Spinosa, International Vice President Bob McEllrath and International Secretary Treasurer Willie Adams came to the table to help them close the deal. They were able to achieve a lump sum signing bonus of $700 per member, a small reduction in the insurance co-pay in the fourth year of the five-year contract and some minor changes in the long-term disability and sick leave concessions.
They also got a small increase in wages totaling $5 per hour over the life of the contract and another $11 per month per year of service in pensions. Altogether, even with the new co-pays, the workers came out ahead, so the negotiating committee couldn’t recommend striking, especially knowing the company’s warehouses were stocked in anticipation. The members voted June 26 to accept the deal by a vote of 58 to 17. But the outcome could have gone either way, Harvey and others said.
“The company bought this deal with the wages,” said Harvey. “We got every nickel we could. We were ready to strike over the health care demand if this new money had not materialized.”
Through three months of talks, the company stuck to its demand that workers pay 20 percent of health care costs, although the co-pays will be phased in over the life of the contract. Now members who had never paid premiums or co-pays before will pay each time they visit a doctor or buy medicines, and a new deduction will appear on their pay stub.
“The real injury is year six until infinity,” said Harvey, who points to language in the contract that gives the local president annual review power over the company’s health care numbers. Harvey plans to demand paybacks to workers if health care cost savings come about, as the company argued, if members reduce their benefit usage due to co-pays.
“We stayed in there and got the best wage offer we could,” Harvey said. “Every member stays in the black through the life of the agreement. We had the authority to go out, but it would have been hard to suggest a strike in light of the wages.”
Dollars may have smoothed over the bottom line, but side-by-side comparisons of the two deals shows that Rio Tonto succeeded by setting an aggressive tone out of the gate, never wavering in its demand that ILWU members accept health care co-pays.
Local 20 hits the 20 percent contribution level in the fifth year of its contract. Miners in the desert hit that level in the third year of their five-year contract. They also conceded changes in long-term disability and sick leave.
Each worker in Wilmington will see a wage hike of between 54-to-62 cents each year, after costing out health care against the five-dollars-across-five-years wage increase. Some miners actually will see a decrease in pay due to last year’s deal.
“Will we feel these injuries? We’re going to feel this every day for years,” said Spinosa, who led longshore negotiators in the 2002 fight for the longshore contract. That contract, like earlier pacts with Borax, saw workers pay zero for health care. “Health care is on the front burner in all collective bargaining and these contracts just turned up the heat.”
As he prepared to leave office later this year, Spinosa said the new crop of leaders understand that health care is ground zero in bargaining.
“It’s the rank-and-file I worry about,” the outgoing president said. “These contracts show how tough things are going to be in the coming years.”
