By Craig Merrilees

When the Dispatcher reported last month that a settlement had been reached for the Northern California Warehouse Master Agreement, there was news about raises for workers—along with some painful health benefit reductions for spouses and retirees. But behind that report lies a deeper story about the future of the ILWU and the warehouse industry.

It’s no secret that the ILWU’s role in the Bay Area warehouse industry has been declining for several decades, as revealed through falling membership numbers, fewer union shops, and lower union density within the industry—factors that make it difficult for the ILWU and other unions to maintain good contracts for Bay Area warehouse workers—despite the hard work and dedication of ILWU members and officials.

Local 6 Has Been Hit Hard
The numbers at Local 6 illustrate a local that has been reeling from plant closures and run-away shops for decades. Membership peaked just after WWII when nearly 17,000 workers were employed in hundreds of union shops and dominated much of the regional coffee, beverage, paper, and food service industries. Most of these shops were covered by standard agreements or the Northern California Master. When Fred Pecker joined Local 6 in the mid-1980’s, there were less than 10,000 members, and today there around 3,000. The Master now covers approximately 600 ILWU workers in a handful of shops, plus some Teamster members who are covered by the jointly–negotiated agreement. While contracts in some shops are still patterned and influenced by the Master, many are the only remaining union shops within their region or industry—making for hard bargaining because the competition is predominantly non-union and operating with lower costs.

Industry Thrives While
Unions Decline
Ironically, the warehouse industry is thriving—but most of the growth is outside the Bay Area and non-union. Several factors explain why the warehouse industry has changed, leaving the ILWU and other unions with declining membership, low density, and eroding contracts. Some of the forces that devastated the ILWU’s presence in warehousing are the same ones that ravaged industrial unions across America and the industrialized world. The most important factors in the decline of union warehousing include:

   Skyrocketing land costs that have made it too expensive for most warehouses to continue operating near the docks and in cities with ILWU locals. Warehouse managers who owned their buildings and land were tempted to sell their property, pocket huge gains, and relocate on lower-cost land outside the cities. In San Francisco, Oakland, and Emeryville, many old warehouses where ILWU members once worked have been closed, sold, and dismantled or transformed into luxury condos, retail, or commercial office space.

    City congestion, growth in the suburbs, and new freeway systems made it more efficient for warehouses to relocate outside cities along fast-moving interstate routes. The exodus of warehousing from the cities paralleled the post-World War II move toward suburbs, sparked by decades of post-war prosperity (shared by most union members), massive public spending on the interstate highway system (initially conceived as a cold war military asset), and the creation of FHA and Fannie-Mae loan programs that aided single-home ownership and the real-estate industry.

   The growth of the trucking industry allowed warehouses to operate further from the docks. Trucking grew quickly in the 30’s—along with creative organizing tactics developed by radical union leaders in Minneapolis who won another famous strike in 1934 that laid the foundation for a Teamsters’ National Master Freight Agreement in 1964. At the same time, containerization transformed the waterfront, increasing efficiency, reducing the workforce, and creating greater dependence on trucking. Deregulation of the trucking industry in 1981 slashed transportation costs further and devastated the Teamsters Union when 183 unionized carriers were driven out of business within one year and 30 percent of freight handling Teamsters were left unemployed. The remaining union carriers leveraged concessions in wages, pensions, health benefits, speed-ups, and “flexible workweeks” that included weekends. Deregulation—supported by Republicans, Democrats, and President Carter—quickly transformed one of the most powerful unions and high-union-density economic sectors into the predominantly low-wage, low-cost, non-union industry it remains today.

    Avoiding unions and searching for lower labor costs has long been a powerful motivator for warehouses to flee the coast and seek refuge in California’s central valley or move farther into “right-to-work” states, including Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. Passage of the Taft-Hartley law in 1947 weakened unions in many ways, including establishing the “right-to-work” scheme that allowed states to prohibit “union shops” and replace “card-check recognition” in every state with Labor Board elections that gave management the right to campaign and coerce workers to vote against the union.

   Concentration and consolidation in the retail and warehouse industry, combined with de-industrialization, off-shoring and outsourcing have resulted in more warehouses that are larger in size, and more likely to be linked with a major corporation. Outsourcing production within the U.S. has meant relocating warehouses to the south or other non-union regions. As offshoring shifted more industrial production to Asia, the containers unloaded on the west coast now move quickly inland, past old ILWU warehouses to modern facilities in the central valley, high desert, or nearby states. Leveraged buy-outs in the 80’s, and private equity hedge funds today put more pressure on firms to cut costs, raise returns for investors, and squeeze workers.

    The use of new technology (computers, scanners, gps, automated pick and sorting devices) combined with just-in-time production and distribution methods, have transformed the nature of work in many warehouses and increased productivity. But most modern warehouses are now non-union, so workers have not shared in those productivity gains, while older warehouses (more likely to be union shops) often lack this new technology and are left at a competitive disadvantage.

The result is a modern warehouse and distribution industry that is:
      more concentrated and integrated with shipping companies and retailers.
      more vulnerable to disruption at any point along a global supply chain
      more dependent on higher technology, yet still labor intensive.
      largely non-union.
The challenges can seem overwhelming. Individually, any of these factors would be difficult to overcome, but combined they can feel overwhelming to leaders at Local 6 in the Bay Area, Local 17 in Sacramento, Local 9 in Seattle, and Local 26 in Los Angeles that once represented workers in hundreds of warehouses.

“For every job we gain through organizing, we seem to lose another,” says Local 6 Secretary-Treasurer Fred Pecker. “We’ve lost so many shops and members that it feels like a war zone around here. We were fighting this war against closures and concessions before I started here twenty-two years ago,” he adds, “and it hasn’t stopped.”

 “For decades, our focus has been on negotiations and contract enforcement,” Pecker explained. “The pressure to deal with current conditions, and our struggle with limited resources meant that it didn’t seem like we could afford to put the same effort into organizing. The loss of our membership has put us in a downward spiral where it becomes harder and harder to maintain our existing contracts,” says Pecker.

Pecker’s observations are similar to problems that many other unions have been facing since membership peaked in the late 60’s or early 70’s. Figuring out a strategy for growth—and marshalling the organizational commitment and resources—has been a challenge throughout the labor movement.

HISTORY HOLDS CLUES
The history of the ILWU offers some interesting examples of how the union has addressed this problem in the past, that included organizing campaigns during both good and bad times. History also shows that the fate of both longshore and warehouse workers has been closely linked.

The union’s famous “march inland,” occurred after the first waterfront contracts were won in 1934 when there were only about 500 warehouse workers in the union. But within two years, nearly 4,000 warehouse workers had joined the union; providing some much-needed bargaining power that was tested in 1936 when a 3- month strike shut the ports as longshore and warehouse workers joined forces to win better contracts together. Employers were refusing to pay union members over .60 cents an hour while there were so many men willing to work for .40 cents. Longshore picketers left their comfort zone at the docks and went to organize workers in nearby warehouses and shops. The strike was won when warehouse workers reached a settlement first, then contributed desperately needed funds to help their longshore brothers survive longer on the picket lines and eventually win their contract.

By 1938 there were 8500 ILWU members working in San Francisco warehouses—just in time for a city-wide lockout that was settled when the union and employers established the first Master Warehouse Agreement. Ten years later, longshore workers were on strike in 1948 and warehouse workers provided funding and support to help their brothers again. Warehouse workers had big strikes in 1967 and 1976, when longshore members offered support.

Today, it’s the Longshore Division locals that have the strong financial resources and a booming membership—but the spirit of solidarity still lives. Consider what happened when 300 low-wage workers from Local 6 honored the Teamster lock-out at Waste Management for 30 days this past July. Longshore locals contributed over $50,000 to help workers who were mostly women, many of whom were recent immigrants.

“The support we got from all over the union, especially longshore, was sobering,” said Pecker. “Workers who are making good money and benefits can have a hard time understanding what low-wage workers face, but the support we felt during the lockout made us all proud to be part of a union where there are brothers and sisters who still understand the power and urgency of solidarity.”

Organizing is the Obvious Answer, but…
“The problems that warehouse locals face today can only be solved like they were in 1936—by organizing more workers in the industry,” says ILWU International Secretary-Treasurer Willie Adams, who has been convening meetings of the Warehouse Caucus.

 “Organizing workers today is so much harder than it was in the 30’s,” says Adams. He says some of the challenges are the same; opposition from employers and anti-union politicians, for example, and notes that the union’s Political Action Fund is crucial for addressing that problem.

But Adams also believes there are new challenges that require more discussion about what is needed from members and leaders if the union is serious about organizing new workers. He says the ILWU’s organizing effort in the warehouse industry is raising many difficult issues, including:

   Many new warehouses are located a hundred miles or more away from the largest ILWU warehouse locals.

   The workforce in many warehouses includes workers who speak Spanish and other languages that many leaders don’t understand.

   Most ILWU members haven’t participated yet in an organizing campaign, although Adams believes many would find it rewarding and he feels their role is “absolutely critical.”

   The financial resources needed to tackle today’s warehouse industry—and take on the mega-employers involved—are enormous.

Adams says none of these obstacles are overwhelming, and he believes the ILWU is making progress in several areas. For example:

   The ILWU is now allocating a third of the International Union income to organizing—something that few other unions have matched.

   Some ILWU workers and officers from the Longshore Division are volunteering to help Rite Aid employees who live in the desert, almost 100 miles away from the docks and union halls of San Pedro.

   Many of the ILWU organizing staff speak Spanish, as do some of the volunteers who are meeting with warehouse workers that want to join the ILWU.

The ILWU’s Organizing Director, Peter Olney, believes one of the biggest challenges—and opportunities—for ILWU organizing is to harness the union’s existing strength on the docks, and use that power to follow the containers wherever they lead, including warehouse work.

“We have to build our organizing strategies around the opportunities that are present in the new systems and traditional links on the docks,” he says. “One goal is to harness our power on the docks through thousands of longshore workers who understand that their future prosperity depends on helping other workers beyond the docks to escape poverty. That’s not going to happen overnight, but we have to get moving because there are other forces at work that leave all of us vulnerable, including longshore workers.”

Olney’s reference to “other forces” may sound sinister, but he says it’s just a question of perspective. Today’s longshore workers, he says, are a critical link in the global supply chain, “but we’re surrounded in all directions by a workforce that’s predominantly non-union and low-wage.

Willie Adams says the existing links between longshore and warehouse are critical, and notes that the Longshore Division has provided valuable financial support for organizing and other important projects.

“Change on the docks and in warehousing is constant,” he says, “and I’ve seen plenty of changes during my time in the industry.” Adams notes that longshore is thriving now, but cautions that the future may be more difficult. “Organizing new workers down the supply chain is critical because we’re at a crossroads now with warehousing, and all of us have a stake in the outcome,” he says.

Adams points to the historic role played by ILWU Secretary-Treasurer Lou Goldblatt, who encouraged warehouse organizing more than half a century ago. “Lou wanted warehouse and longshore folks to work together, because workers could benefit from the experience and power of both industries; that was the strategy then, and it’s our best chance for a larger and stronger union today.”