The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) continue to maintain their position of not commenting on the US West Coast labour contract negotiations. At the same time as a new contract is being negotiated APM Terminals is implementing automated straddle carriers at part of its Pier 400 facility in Los Angeles.

At some point in August ILWU longshoremen declined to work some vessels at Pier 400 and the ships were diverted to Long Beach. In presenting the ports throughput figures for the month of August Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said around 40,000 TEU of volume was diverted to Long Beach in August, and the number is likely to be in the 60,000 to 80,000 TEU range in September.

Seroka did not give details on the issue at APM Terminals, other than to say, “there are some discussions on the ground between union leadership and the folks over at APMT about health and safety measures around the automated area and I understand that these should be resolved very soon, but I leave it to the experts to come to those conclusions quickly so we can get back to normal.”

Despite Seroka’s optimism a quick result might hard to achieve. Although TraPac and LBCT are already operating automated terminals at San Pedro harbour, Pier 400 is taking a different path by implementing automated straddle carriers without automated stacking cranes.

Equipment automation has been previously agreed in the labour contract of 2008 but only in very broad language. Details around exactly how automation is implemented, how personnel access to automated zones is controlled and managed, and what role longshore labour plays in that process are negotiated separately.

There is a lot at stake and other automated terminals had long battles with the ILWU in this area. TraPac intitially implemented equipment automation with access control gates and fail-safe systems that were based on how other automated terminals, including in the US, operated. In 2014 the ILWU was successful in shutting down the automated area of TraPac over “health and safety concerns” and forcing TraPac to have an independent audit of the automation system “configuration, access and security features, along with establishing comprehensive safety and jurisdictional procedures and protocols.” Eventually, TraPac was forced to implement what the ILWU called “additional safety protocols for ILWU Mechanics, Longshoremen, Marine Clerks and Foremen.”

As well as what is happening at Pier 400, the current negotiations would be expected to be influenced by how the implementation of automation has played out to date. Since the last contract was agreed in 2019 parties have had four years to see how the contract language and issues that have gone to award decisions and arbitration have impacted their position. There have been wins and losses for both sides.

In some areas the ILWU has perhaps not seen the benefit it was expecting from some of the conditions agreed in the last negotiations. For example, the Marine Clerks contract of 2019 assigned various yard planning and rail planning work to marine clerks “in exchange for the Employer’s right to introduce new technologies.”  The contract allows employers to introduce software that automates the yard and rail planning functions, while at the same time assigning yard and rail planning work to marine clerks. The work that remains at the clerk level is data entry and verification, mostly of exceptions to automated data capture technology. The level of this data work that is required is diminishing as technology improves, reducing the need for marine clerks and creating issues around the number of people that are needed in roles like supervisors and chief supervisors in the ILWU hierarchy.

Furthermore, both sides will be looking out at new technologies like remote controlled quay cranes, container tracking, remote reefer monitoring and equipment electrification and trying to negotiate language that protects their position around these developments.

There is growing frustration in the media, the Biden administration and some ILWU rank and file about the length of time negotiations are taking, but this is how the process works. It is widely reported that “automation” is the sticking point, but what is most likely happening behind closed doors is not an existential debate on whether terminals should be automated or not, but a much more detailed negotiation about how to fit technology into a very complicated and prescriptive set of workplace rules.