THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9407220599
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
The executive board of the Hampton Roads Shipping Association will meet today to decide what to do about a concessions package rejected last Friday by local members of the International Longshoremen's Association.
It's unclear why the dock workers rejected the wage and hours concession package that had been negotiated by the shipping association and the union's leadership. Local ILA officials could not be reached for comment.
``We're very disappointed, and we're looking forward to talking with the union leadership to see what we can do to move forward from here,'' said Johnnie J. Johnson, chairman of the shipping association and management's chief negotiator.
The shipping association represents the terminals, stevedoring companies and shipping lines in the port of Hampton Roads. Under pressure from competing ports offering less expensive services and shipping lines looking to reduce costs, the association asked dock workers to take a pay cut and change some work rules when handling break-bulk cargo.
Break-bulk cargo - such as cocoa beans, rubber or steel - is shipped on pallets rather than in containers.
``What the union voted down was very complicated,'' said Joseph A. Dorto, general manager and chief executive of Virginia International Terminals Inc., which operates Norfolk International Terminal, Portsmouth Marine Terminal and Newport News Marine Terminal for the Virginia Port Authority.
``I don't know which part of it got voted down and whether we have to go back to the drawing board or renegotiate or what,'' Dorto said.
The union's membership rejected concessions that included reducing the top wage for handling break-bulk cargo to $16.50 an hour from $21 an hour - a 21 percent cut.
The concessions also would have reduced guaranteed work time for the region's dock workers when handling break-bulk cargo.
The concessions would not have affected ILA wages and work rules for container traffic, which accounts for about 85 percent of the port's general cargo tonnage. Much of the world's seaborne cargo is now transported in cost-efficient containers.
Break-bulk cargo, which accounts for the other 15 percent of the port's general cargo tonnage, is more labor intensive and generates more man-hours for dock workers.
But shipments of cocoa beans and rubber, the port's two principal break-bulk commodities, were off 29.2 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively, last year. Neither has improved this year.
In recent years competing East Coast ports, mostly south of here, took aim at Hampton Roads' break-bulk business by offering less expensive service using non-union labor. by CNB