US West Coast labour representative, International Longshore Warehouse Union (ILWU) has filed for bankruptcy protection following its dispute with ICTSI Oregon Inc., which has been running for more than a decade.
In a statement issued on 30 September the union said it intended to protect its future by using the bankruptcy process to “resolve the pending litigation with ICTSI Oregon Inc. that has hindered the non-profit organisation since 2012.”
ILWU president Willie Adams said the union had attempted to resolve the dispute on many occasions without success, stating that “at this point, the union can no longer afford to defend itself against ICTSI’s scorched-Earth litigation tactic.”
However, labour relations consultant Jim Tessier berated the union arguing its bankruptcy claim “should be denied, it’s another grift to avoid accountability”.
The case between the two litigants initially revolved around two staff that were employed by the Port of Oregon at ICTSI’s Terminal Six, which the ILWU thought should have gone to its members.
International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI) contended that union action, which affected the terminal’s operations, was involving the company in a ‘secondary boycott’ which is illegal under US law. The dispute rumbled on for seven years before coming to a federal court in 2019, when a jury ruled against the union and awarded ICTSI, who had by then terminated its contract with the Oregon port, US$93.6 million in damages, including loss of profits.
Jim Tessier argues that the union’s strategies have brought it to this point, claiming that its former president, known as Big Bob McEllrath’s “bully boy” tactics were the cause of the union’s woes.
On X (formerly Twitter), Tessier claims the union has “done a Trump” and highlights a 2019 article entitled Big Baby McEllrath’s Legacy: A US$93.6 million Judgment that might bankrupt the ILWU, which quotes ICTSI’s lawyer saying, “The ILWU wet too far. They gave the middle finger to the port, the National Labour Relations Board and to its own community”.
Union lawyers argued that ICTSI’s losses were down to the fact that it lost its only customer, Hanjin, which later went bankrupt, market forces and the fact that the port was situated upriver on a connecting waterway that was too shallow to support large modern tonnage.
At the time, the New York Times quoted Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, saying, “It’s more than a chilling effect. It’s an Ice Age-level impact,” adding that the ruling was “an extremely dangerous precedent.”
In any case, the union has now filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and says it will reorganise and restructure its systems to minimise the effects of the application, including the filing of ‘First Day’ motions with the bankruptcy court so that it can continue its activities and pay its staff.
The union says it expects the court to approve “these customary requests”.
Mary Ann Evans
Correspondent at Large
