Mismanagement of Seattle’s “Big Bertha” Tunnel Project is responsible for the current labor problems with the Seattle Tunnel Partners (STP), contends representatives from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 19.
The union cites problems at the top management levels of STP relating to the Deep Bore Tunnel “Project Labor Agreement” (PLA), and problems with the Port of Seattle and WSDOT, relating to a $4 million lease agreement for part of a marine terminal that will be used to load barges. Projects of this complexity and size typically employ a third party to mange a PLA. However, STP and WSDOT have not engaged a firm to do this, and this has contributed to a total breakdown in the management of labor relations.
“The type of mismanagement that we are witnessing at STP has not only created turmoil within the TBM operation itself and between them and the utilities, it has also undermined the area standards that all unionized workers in marine operations have relied upon,” says Cameron Williams, Local 19 President. “STP is using a moot arbitration and a fictitious story about unions fighting unions to cover up their own misdeeds.”
In addition, according to the lease agreement between the Port and WSDOT, both parties are authorized and required to “use [their] best efforts in avoiding labor unrest…[and] in the event of labor difficulty…to use its good offices in negotiating and bringing to a swift and satisfactory conclusion to any kind of labor dispute that may affect the interests of the Port.
“The Port and WSDOT remain on the sidelines of the dispute, even though it has been brewing for months, and has resulted in a well publicized picket line and the filing of complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. Because of this, WSDOT also appears to be in material violation of the lease’s “general standards” agreement with the Port, which could lead to its termination. That would be a problem for keeping the Tunnel Project on track. STP also failed to arrange an agreement to unload the TBM “Big Bertha” in advance of it being shipped, which led to it sitting unloaded for five days in Elliot Bay last April.
An arrangement to offload was agreed to with a subcontractor, after which the TBM was unloaded by longshore union workers without delay. In spite of ILWU workers already performing some of the marine terminal jobs related to the Tunnel Project under the same contract, STP Project Manager Chris Dixon claimed that an arbitration effectively leaves all maritime labor out of the barge operations for the Tunnel. Dan McKisson, a union liaison to the Port, says Dixon can’t have it both ways.
“We have documentation that Chris Dixon of the Tunnel Partners has participated in negotiations with us since 2011 over the barge operation, and he and STP agreed with a contract for ILWU workers to do the job,” says McKisson.
“Now he ‘throws the game’ with an arbitration that doesn’t apply to marine barge operations, where we were not allowed to participate, with Dixon acting as prosecutor and defense simultaneously, to throw out the existing contract to which he voluntarily agreed.”
The Tunnel PLA covers construction work on “temporary facilities such as fabrication yards and/or assembly plants located at or adjacent” to the Tunnel project. It does not mention port, maritime, or ship terminal operations. The lease agreement, signed over a year later, defines the barge operation but is not covered by the PLA or its dispute mechanisms.
“The motive behind STPs actions seem to be the circumventing of area standards for a marine terminal loading facility, and the Tunnel Project as a whole is suffering for it,” adds Williams.
— ILWU Local 19 news release