Unionists picket the Hornblower Alcatraz ferry pier. Photo by Steve Stallone. by Steve Stallone A hole was blown in San Francisco’s formerly solid union waterfront when the federal government recently awarded the contract for the ferry run to Alcatraz Island to a non-union company.
Ever since the former high security prison was turned into a popular tourist attraction in 1973, the ferry boats to the island in the middle of the bay have been operated by members of the Inlandboatmen’s Union, the Marine Division of the ILWU, and the Masters, Mates and Pilots. Last year the Bush administration’s National Park Service, which runs Alcatraz as part of its system, took bids for the ferry run. On Sept. 27, 2005 NPS announced it was giving a new, 10-year contract for the ferry run to Hornblower Yachts, Inc., an organization that runs dinner cruises on the San Francisco Bay out of Oakland with non-union crews.
With that move some 15 IBU ferry deckhands and 35 MMP captains, deckhands, customer service reps and ticket agents lost their jobs and the health care coverage for them and their families. Payments toward their pensions ceased.
“It’s definitely a hardship on all of them,” said Marina Secchitano, San Francisco Regional Director of the IBU. “The possibility of losing their jobs has been hanging over their heads for a year now and it makes it difficult for their families to plan even the smallest things knowing they may be unemployed.”
Within a couple of months, Blue and Gold Fleet, the union ferry operator that has been taking tourists to the island for 32 years, filed a protest in the Federal Court of Claims on the grounds that NPS had improperly evaluated the proposals. B&G alleged the contract should be subject to the Service Contract Act, a long-standing labor law requiring a successor of a federal contract to pay the same level of wages and benefits as the current contractor. B&G asked for an injunction to stop the transfer of the contract.
The two unions, the IBU and MMP, also filed suit in U.S. District Court in Oakland in March 2006 seeking an injunction against awarding the contract to Hornblower on the basis that the bid violated the SCA.
Then-Democratic Minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco wrote a letter to the Dept. of Labor asking it to expedite its investigation into whether the SCA applied to the Alcatraz contract. Pelosi also wrote a letter to the NPS asking for an explanation on why it allowed Hornblower an approximately 60 percent increase in the ferry ticket price when it had no yet even proven it could do the work.
U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilkins ruled that the SCA did apply to the Alcatraz contract and only the Dept. of Labor could say it didn’t. The Dept. of Labor eventually determined the law did apply 10 days before Hornblower started the run.
The unions also mobilized to use their political and community support. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution supporting the union ferry workers retaining their jobs and urging the San Francisco Port Commission to consider the impact on public safety of not having the experienced union crews on board and the impact to Fisherman’s Wharf tourism business to relocate the Alcatraz ferry service elsewhere on the waterfront.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin held a public hearing to address the environmental, business and traffic impacts of moving the ferry service from B&G’s Pier 41 to Hornblower’s Pier 31½ that both Hornblower and the NPS declined to attend.
The Port of San Francisco has also complained to Hornblower that it hasn’t responded to repeated requests from the port for information on changes it is making to its pier facilities that may require environmental review.
Neighborhood groups Citizens to Save the Waterfront and the Telegraph Hill Dwellers filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against Hornblower to stop the service from Pier 31½ starting without an environmental review of the impact of the transfer of 1.3 million passengers per year from Pier 41.
In the face of all this opposition Hornblower and NPS proceeded ahead and started the ferry run on Sept. 25.
“They’ve displayed tremendous arrogance, acting as if the law doesn’t apply to them,” said MMP California Branch Agent Captain Ray Shipway. “They’ve just gone ahead without the review for the intensification of use that the port requires.”
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Pelosi’s office intervened in negotiations between unions and Hornblower trying to get an agreement that would result in the hiring of a majority of the union workforce and voluntary recognition of the IBU and MMP as the collective bargaining agent of the workers. But the company would not budge on its position.
When Hornblower advertised for the new jobs on its ferry run, most all the B&G workers applied. But only a handful were called in for interviews and even fewer were hired. The unions filed an Unfair Labor Practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board alleging discrimination on the basis of union affiliation.
“We feel this charge will hold up,” Shipway said. “They passed over the most qualified people for job.”
Hornblower filed its own charges with the NLRB on the unions, alleging the unions were picketing its operation to coerce it into recognizing the union. The company also alleged the unions are engaging in an illegal secondary boycott since the Alcatraz ferry is operated by one of the company’s subsidiaries, and is seeking an injunction to keep the unions from picketing.
The unions have been picketing the Hornblower dock every Sunday, trying to get tourists to pass on the boat ride. They have been getting wide-spread support from the labor movement, including not just ILWU Locals 6, 10, 34 and 91, but also the San Francisco Labor Council, the Teamsters, postal workers, teachers, machinists, the Sailors Union of the Pacific and the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association. The California Labor Federation has sanctioned a boycott of Hornblower in support of the IBU and the MMP.
On two successive weekends several of the union officers, including Secchitano and Shipway, and other members and unionists have been arrested in civil disobedience actions during the picket line demonstrations.
Although Hornblower has been running the Alcatraz ferry without them for several weeks now, the unions remain optimistic that they will prevail in the long run. They plan to continue the Sunday morning pickets at Pier 31½ to keep up the pressure on the company and to maintain the visibility of the issue. The NLRB rulings may yet help too.
“We could win in a way where Hornblower would have to hire our people and abide by the IBU contract,” Secchitano said.
And now that the Democrats have swept the House of Representatives and San Francisco’s Pelosi will be the Speaker of the House, setting the legislative and budget agenda, things have changed significantly.
“The National Park Service needs its budget from Congress and that means it will have to respond to Pelosi’s concerns,” Secchitano added.
