ILWU vs. PMA Negotiations Negative Impact on Retail Sales - Annotated Bibliography Example

ILWU vs. PMA (How recent Contract Negotiations Negatively Impacted Retail Sales). Annotated Bibliography Farris, M.T. (2008). Are You Prepared for a Devastating Port Strike in 2008? Transportation Journal, 47(1), 44-50. Farris (2008) describe International Longshore and Warehouse Union as labour union that primarily represents dockworkers on the West Coast of United States of America. According to Farris (2008), the union was formed in August 11, 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike, a three-month strike that culminated in four-day general strike in San Fransisco and the Bay area. The article provides a history of the participants (ILWU and PMA) in the West Coast port negotiations. In addition, it provides a description of how ILWU and PMA came up for negotiations that finally stalled into a work slowdown that prompted the PMA to impose a lockout of dockworkers. The impacts of the action that were taken by the Pacific Maritime Association(PMA) resulted in billion costs to the economy and created severe interruptions in most of the retail sales as well as the supply chain. It also means that labour disputes resulted in disruptions in production and, therefore, the Washington state would lose millions from a tax that come from the retail sales. Olney, P. (2011). Battle in the Mojave: Lessons from the Rio Tinto lockout. New Labor Forum, Spring 2011, 75-82,115. The article describes some of the strikes carried out by the dockworkers. Workers started taking action consisting the whole shipping department marched on the department supervisor to challenge a unilateral change in staffing procedures. Same actions were carried out over the course of subsequent days. The battle was on, but the union successfully drew the company offside. By declaring a lockout, the company gave the union three key weapons in its arsenal. First, by virtue of being locked out, under California law the workers were eligible to collect unemployment insurance, which was vital to sustaining them and their families financially. Secondly, the lockout meant that solidarity among members was enforced, as nobody could cross the line and work even if they wanted to. Third, and most significantly, the company had cast the first stone, and in a time of economic desperation a British-owned corporation had decided to deprive American working families of their livelihoods - this became a talking point that resonated throughout the lockout. Hall, P. (2004). “We’d Have to Sink the Ships”: Impact Studies and the 2002 West Coast Port Lockout. Economic Development Quarterly, 18(4), 354-367 This article argues that the traditional port impacts studies are misleading and an unhelpful analytical tool in order to understand the costs of a temporary disruption of the seaport and transportation infrastructure related. Port impact research translates that the cargo that are handled by a port into many measures of economic operations applying a continuous monotonic role. The more the cargo throughput that is being disrupted, the great the cumulative impact. By doing so, impact studies assume incorrectly that spatial-organizational production that exists are are fixed. Therefore, they necessarily do not address the chances of substitution between and within sections even in the short run, and they are not addressing the discontinuous nature of the outcomes. In part, the challenges results from the fact that impact research are poorly designed in order to deal with changing nature of relationship between seaport activities and the economic development, especially the ever increasing spatial disconnection of the cargo-related economic operations from the waterfront. In general, port impact studies is representing static and fixed terms that are dynamic and strategic processes of the economic decision-making. Olney, P., (2006). Strikes, Picketing and Inside Campaigns: A Legal Guide for Unions. Working USA, 9(2), 245-247 The new realities of the worldwide economy can lead to heartbreaking dislocation for the working families who lose income, jobs and livelihood to the retail stores closure. However, the dependency of the economy of instant delivering and supplying of sections and inventory provides the working class with new opportunities of exercising strategic leverage. Their employers, the Pacific Maritime Association, locked tens of thousands of the West Coast dockworkers represented by the (ILWU) out of their port jobs. The two weeks absence of the handful of workers from the ports in the West Coast brought Pacific Rim trade to a screeching halt as the giant container ships were marooned heavily loaded outside Key West Coast ports. However, the delaying of giant retailers and manufacturers prompted the U.S administration to apply the Taft-Hartley cooling-off provisions until the year 1978. Cole, C. (2013). The Tip of the Spear: How Longshore Workers in the San Francisco Bay Area Survived the Containerization Revolution. Employ Response Rights J, 25, 205-216. Introducing of new technologies always crushes unions; indeed, that is the purpose. However, the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, on the US Pacific Coast, demonstrated that need not happen. In the year 1960, the Pacific Maritime Association and ILWU signed the Modernization & Mechanization agreement. Modernization & Mechanization agreement (M&M) represented the first efforts by a union of shaping the process of getting the machine.” Although workers knew that new technologies cannot be resisted, a controversy that is still existing, culminating in the United States shipping sector longest strike ever. In the year 1971, the San Francisco Bay area’s members led this strike, having experienced the containerization most extensively. Even though, their numbers plummeted, those who remain maintained power at strategic places of the world economy. Therefore, the paper provides understanding of the origin of the contracts between the ILWU and PMA. Also, by having a look at how these workers were managing to survive and shape the introduction of a valuable technology suggested that it, globalization, need not often destroy unions. Robert, A., Edward, H., & Petrosky, A. (2007). Integrating Strategic Models of Labour Conflict: Strike Leverage and Pattern Bargaining. Competition Forum, 5(1), 97-100. Industrial, as well as the labour revolutions, is analyzed, and the likelihood outcomes of the labor relations conflict applying the strike pattern bargaining and leverage. When there are differences between unions and management along dimensions, for example, impact and centralizations, the probable resolution of impasse could be predicted. Normally, the models of strike leverage can assess the micro-economic decisions of an individual’s decision makers, and pattern bargaining models addresses the macro industry dynamics. The significance of the paper is that it shows the probable outcomes from the labour management negotiations that broke down completely and negotiations reach a state of impasse. It states that conflicts for instance union strikes and management lockouts are always the probable outcomes. The industrial and labor relation researched provides two conceptual models in order to understand the conflicts nature and the most likely outcomes: pattern bargaining and Strike leverage. The strike leverage assesses the ability and willingness of the management as well as the labor sustaining a strike. However, such model focuses on a micro-economics factors that are driving the managers, individuals actors, and the labor unions of reaching an impasse and calling a lockout or strike. Bill, B, (2012). Labor and Occupy: A Productive Embrace Assessing the Battle of Longview. Against the current. 27(1), 7-8. The article provide an understanding of the management of the International Labour & Warehouse Union, and how leaderships of most of the leading ILWU in West Coast failed to back Occupy’s efforts of building solidarity with the struggle of Longview Local 21. Also, it describes how ILWU International President publicly distanced its union from its actions, and ILWU Seattle Local 1 9 passed a resolution that forbid its members from supporting Occupy, either formally or informally. It also singles out the settlement of the contractual problems that involves International Long shore and Warehouse Union Local 21 in the Longview. Also, it describes how Washington ended the immediate plans by the West Coast Occupy and Occupy Oakland Labor other groups for a mobilization in defense of Longview workers. However, the relevant questions are still posed about how the settlement happened, and how Occupy movement connects with militant segments of the workers movement. The analysis that is presented in the article is also a follow-up to the authors article on the Port closures in Oakland. The importance of this article is that it provides an overview of a conflict around the $200 million terminal facility that initially came up in the context of a struggle. International Labour & Warehouse Union, whose strength is mostly tied to its long shore base of workers and whose members have been working the grain trade in the Northwest for many decades, but they confronted further automation, a problem that the union has battled for a very long time. Hall, P. (2009). Container ports, local benefits, and transportation worker earnings. GeoJournal, 74, 67–83 Over the last 50 years, containerization has reflected and enabled the articulation of increasingly complex and concentrated world trade flows. Once close infrastructural, institutional and economic ties between port cities and seaports have been loosened because the major ports are serving consumers and producers in a wide dispersed hinterlands. This process has been intense in the North America, where west coast ports are serving the markets across the continent. However, at the same most of the external costs of the increased port operations are being incurred in the port cities. Hence, the article provides an answer to the questions about changing the nature of employment in port cities and handling related goods sectors. It also provides an understanding of increasingly significant share of economic benefits that are received by the port cities. Therefore, the article focuses on the containerization effects, and related changes in the regulation of transportation, on port-logistics worker earnings in key U.S. port cities. Sharpsteen, B. (2011). The docks. Berkeley: University of California Press. The articles discusses about terminals reports that are extreme in productivity falloffs in the servicing of vessels at the Southern California ports, which is the busiest container ports in the U.S. In addition, explains how normal levels of productivity in the ports, however, the Union leaders expand their actions against the ports. The level of productivity in Oakland are at an average of over 15% with the falloff in terminals. However, there is growing frustration that the ILWU engages in these deliberate job actions hence undermining productivity. In addition, despite the slowdown tactics, the Pacific Management Authority exercised extraordinary patience and continued to negotiate with the hope of avoiding disruption at the ports. Craighead, C. et.al. (2007). The severity of supply chain disruptions: Design Characteristics and Mitigation Capabilities. Journal compilation and decision sciences, 38(1), 131-143 The supply chain disruption and the associated financial and operational risks represent the most pressing issues that face firms and retail sales that are competing in today’s worldwide market place. The article confirmed the costly nature of disruptions in the supply chain and also contributed to significant insights into such related problems such as the supply chain risks, resilience, vulnerability, and continuity. The articles also describes supply chain as unanticipated and unplanned events that are disrupting the normal flow of materials and goods within the chain of supply and as a result expose the players, including retailers, within the supply chain to financial and operational risks. The inconvenience to large scale retailers who are expecting to ship or receive materials and goods is not the entire story. The disruptive events within a supply chain negatively and significantly influence the financial bottom line including the small scale retailers for affected entities in the supply chain. In addition, the publicly traded organization that are experiencing disruptions in the supply chain, for instance, reported negative stock market reactions to the announcement of disruptive events, with the magnitude declining in market capitalization. ILWU vs. PMA - How recent Contract Negotiations Negatively Impacted Retail Sales Introduction The International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) had initiated an orchestrated slowdowns at the ports in Pacific Northwest of Tacoma and Seattle, and severely impacted majority of the biggest terminals especially during the peak shipping season holiday. The two major ports handle significant number of containerized cargo on the West Coast. However, the Pacific Maritime Authority realized that these slowdowns experienced at ports in the Northwest of Pacific Northwest resulted in a reduction in terminal productivity by a large percentage. However, these are ports that generate revenues to major stakeholders in the economy, for instance, retail sellers, as well as the state government (Cole, 2013. According to compiled statistics by the Pacific Maritime Authority, the terminals that are moving about 25-35 containers per hour, the containers that were being moved was ranging between 10-18. This tracks the historical productivity based on the containers that are moved per hour for every vessel at a similar terminal. However, for generations, the International Longshore & Warehouse Union leadership has been disputing slowdowns existence. It has been exposed that the long-refined practice that the union historically applied to attempted to gain advantage in a contract negotiations. Always, the ILWU would make exaggerated or false claims of issues regarding safety so that to justify the unilateral actions that have been repeatedly found to be violating the coast-wide contract (Olney, 2006). Thesis Statement Contract negotiations between the Pacific Maritime Authority and International Labour & Warehouse Union have been historically fraught with a brinksmanship and an acrimony that has most of the time, spilled over and resulted in disruption of the businesses of the port customers, and they include the retailers as well as other shippers who are moving cargo the ports. For instance, the negotiations, at one point, broke down and the PMA had to impose a lockout of the ILWU workers in response to the union work stoppages and slowdowns. It resulted in the closure of the ports hence leading to a massive backlog of cargo and ships at an economic cost that is approximated to be more than a billion in a day. The impasse was resolved many days later in order for the ports to be reopened and ILWU workers to resume their duties. It is worth to state that it took about six months to sort out the disruptions and for the ports to resume normal activities (Hall, 2004). In addition, the West Coast port performs a significant economic function, and it accounts for almost half of all United States maritime trade and close to 70 percent of all the imports that comes from Asia into the United States. However, they face serious competitiveness problems that would influence the tenor and direction of the labour contract talks.However, the United States talks impact negatively on retailers in many ways. First, in case of disruptions in port activities, it severely affects goods that are bound for retailers stores entering via United States. West Coast ports. This might be of concern for United States retailers and also other retailers in other countries like Canadian stores served which are served by the distribution centres in the U.S. It might also impact small to medium Canadian retailers, majority of those are not importers of record and/or might not produce their branded merchandise (Hall, 2009). This groups have much less flexibility in being in a position of diverting cargo on a very short notice, negotiate with rail, ocean, and truck carriers to make provision for their cargo, or even afford the cost to shift their supply chain and carry an increased inventory, and are dependent on how effective their suppliers manage their supply chains in order to address disruptions (Craighead, 2007). Larger retailers are also impacted, even though they have more flexibility of re-routing cargo by virtue of their bigger logistics activities and bargaining power with the carriers. They are also limited by the circumstances of their chain logistics supply, for instance, the location of the distribution centres. To some extent, they sell branded merchandise other than their private label and also might need to rely on suppliers to handle disruptions and ensure there is the timely delivery of the merchandise (Plunkett, 2009). A key impending competitive problem that the port would face is the completion of the widening of the Panama Canal and that means that the biggest cargo container ships would be able to use an all-water route from Asia all the way to the ports of the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. More so, most factors including the experience of the year 2002, the West-Coast ports’ reputation for contentious labour-management relations led retailers to shift away. In addition, the hostile political environment, in Southern California, to port commerce, and efficient freight-rail service located in Mexico and Canada have led retailers as well as other shippers to shift away from a risky business practice considered of over-reliance on the West Coast. Therefore, shippers and retailers have developed diversified supply chain operations, and they move more cargo via ports in Mexico, Canada, and as well as the East Coast, including westward from regions in Asia through the Suez Canal. Exporters and Importers and others feel the impact from the slow downs and congestion at the ports. It is reported that there are impacts on industries, which relies on the ports to get their products to the market. Precisely, retailers have been having delays in getting goods for the holiday in order to store their shelves. Manufacturers also have had to slow even and at times stop the production lines because of the unavailability of components that are delayed at the ports, hence create high levels of uncertainty for employers and workers who aims to deliver products to global and domestic customers. Apple growers and potato farmers have missed the shipments to overseas markets, hence closing those markets to the future sales (Bill, 2012). Finally, there have been reports of cancelled tree shipments of Christmas to the Asian markets. Continued significant congestion at the ports that are impacting both exports and imports would be witnessed. While there are most reasons for congestion beyond the labor slowdowns, the industry cannot start to develop solutions until a new contract is resolved. There are extreme concerns that negotiations would slip into 2015 and continue to cause challenges problems for all the industries relying on the ports. Conclusion In conclusion, the increasing complexity in the worldwide supply chains has been developed by multiple layers of suppliers in diverse countries hence contributing to the final product. However, it is worth noting that containerization have assisted in the supply chains development as products are shipped more securely and cheaply in standardized units. In addition, it has been discussed, the participation in world supply chains is highly competitive. The complexity of the supply chains, therefore, needs actors who are reliable. Producers, ocean carriers, logistics providers, and ports need to offer services with very few interruptions. Flexibility is also a significant component as worldwide supply chains are increasingly becoming responsive to the fluctuations of the market demand. However, the competitive pressures ensure that flexibility and reliability are attained without increasing costs. At the same time, slow transit times and delays of goods and materials should not be acceptable in the global supply chains. However, the competitive nature of the worldwide supply chains is evident at many levels. Participation in the world system of the international production, trade is dependent on the manufacturers to conform to the supply chain requirements. In order to fulfill such demands, producers need to access appropriate transportation that enable final and intermediate goods to reach the retailers and other consumers in a timely fashion. Therefore, ports need to provide competitive services, which include equipment, infrastructure, and labor. References Bill, B, (2012). Labor and Occupy: A Productive Embrace Assessing the Battle of Longview. Against the current, 27(1), 7-8. Cole, C. (2013). The Tip of the Spear: How Longshore Workers in the San Francisco Bay Area Survived the Containerization Revolution. Employ Response Rights J, 25, 205-216. Craighead, C. et.al. (2007). The severity of supply chain disruptions: Design Characteristics and Mitigation Capabilities. Journal compilation and decision sciences, 38(1), 131-143 Farris, M.T. (2008). Are You Prepared for a Devastating Port Strike in 2008? Transportation Journal, 47(1), 44-50. Hall, P. (2004). “We’d Have to Sink the Ships”: Impact Studies and the 2002 West Coast Port Lockout. Economic Development Quarterly, 18(4), 354-367. Hall, P. (2009). Container ports, local benefits, and transportation worker earnings. GeoJournal, 74, 67–83. Olney, P. (2011). Battle in the Mojave: Lessons from the Rio Tinto lockout. New Labor Forum, Spring 2011, 75-82,115. Olney, P., (2006). Strikes, Picketing and Inside Campaigns: A Legal Guide for Unions. Working USA, 9(2), 245-247. Plunkett, J. W. (2009). Plunketts transportation, supply chain & logistics industry almanac 2009: The only comprehensive guide to the business of transportation, supply chain and logistics management. Houston, TX: Plunkett Research Ltd. Robert, A., Edward, H., & Petrosky, A. (2007). Integrating Strategic Models of Labour Conflict: Strike Leverage and Pattern Bargaining. Competition Forum, 5(1), 97-100. Sharpsteen, B. (2011). The docks. Berkeley: University of California Press. Read More