byHerb Frazier
Area union dockworkers who are members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) 1422 are prepared to operate the cranes at the Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal to reopen the port facility immediately in North Charleston, the president of the local union said.
If the S.C. State Ports Authority (SPA) “gave us the terminal tomorrow, we have the people trained already to run all of the equipment,” said Charles Brave, president of the ILA Local 1422.
So far, about 100 union members, he said, are prepared to be certified on the cranes and other equipment at the terminal, which has been mostly idle since the $1.5 billion facility opened in 2021.
Barbara Melvin, SPA president and CEO said at a recent meeting of the agency’s board of directors that she is committed to working with the ILA to reopen the terminal after the U.S. Supreme Court said Feb. 20 it would not to hear the port’s challenge to a longstanding dispute
“Now our job is to find this path toward what we look like now along with the workforce of the International Longshoremen’s Association,” she said. “We have to do this quickly, but prudently, because we need to unlock some additional terminal capacity for the East Coast.”
The issue centered on whether ILA workers would operate the cranes or whether those jobs would be shared with non-union port employees.
The U.S. Supreme Court settled the question when it sidestepped a court challenge filed by state officials. The decision allows ILA to exclusively operate the cranes and other equipment at the Leatherman terminal.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes as the national ILA is negotiating a new master contract for its more than 65,000 members at 200 affiliates along the East and Gulf coasts.
“We are disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court did not decide to take up the issue regarding S.C. Ports’ jobs at Leatherman Terminal,” Melvin said in a written statement.
The ILA sued the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), an association of shipping companies, after slightly more than 100 ships docked at the Leatherman terminal and non-union crane operators unloaded the vessels. That led to a lawsuit over the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the shipping lines.
The port then filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, which sided with the union in December 2022. The SPA appealed and the court ruled in the ILA’s favor. After the lawsuit, USMX ships avoided the Leatherman terminal. Those ships were diverted to the Wando and North Charleston terminals. But the Supreme Court didn’t take up the appeal.
The local ILA’s Brave said he never doubted that the Supreme Court would rule in the union’s favor “because we are on the right side of the issue. That is why we prepared.” Brave said the USMX established a $2.6 million training budget to train local dock workers at school in Baltimore.
Brave said the court’s decision does not affect a “hybrid’ work arrangement for union and non-union workers at port facilities on the Wando and Cooper rivers. At the Leatherman Terminal, however, “we have all the jobs from the ship to the gate,” he said. The contract also includes union maintenance, clerks and checkers at Leatherman.
S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster said he is concerned about ILA workers operating cranes at the Leatherman Terminal. “You can’t just walk in and work on those cranes. That was the whole point,” the governor said. “A wrong move can destroy a lot of progress, destroy a lot of equipment and hurt a lot of people.”
Brave interprets the governor’s comment as a veiled assertion that the predominantly African American ILA members aren’t capable of operating the cranes.
ILA members have operated cranes at the other port facilities, he said.
“The governor is caught up on unions and low-union density in South Carolina,” Brave said. “He wants to go back to a traditional division of labor at the ports, but the Supreme Court ruled differently.”
Brave said he thanks the ILA national union for supporting the local dockworkers “all the way to the Supreme Court because we don’t have the resources to take on that legal battle.”
He said the union’s master contract has benefited ILA workers on the East and Gulf coasts for more than 70 years.
“The Supreme Court evidently understood that it made no sense to disrupt collective bargaining on the entire East and Gulf coasts just to satisfy the anti-union feelings of some politicians in South Carolina.”
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