Excerpts from the Long Beach Post:
Members of the ILWU collectively took a contracted day off and arrived at the PMA headquarters on Ocean Blvd. to picket at 9AM. By noon, hundreds of workers with friends and family began circling outside the offices at 300 Oceangate chanting, “Pay our bills!” and “Who’s port? Our port!”Longshoremen from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) who work for the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) took a day off from unloading container ships at the Port of Long Beach Monday to protest changes in healthcare processing that they say has left workers and their families with delayed or denied payments.
At the center of the issue, protestors said, was a third-party claims processor and fraud assessor that PMA brought in to handle healthcare requests.
Against the objections of the ILWU, PMA selected Zenith American Solutions to replace CIGNA as its claim processing company set to handle the ILWU-PMA Coastwise Indemnity Plan. ILWU vied for Taft-Hartley Healthcare Plans and the fight eventually faced an arbitrator who sided with PMA. Workers say that the now-lengthy process to get claims approved has backed up services and led to denied payments.
“This isn’t a strike, just a protest,” said one longshoreman. Both parties have agreed to bring in a new third-party administrator for the plan. ILWU and PMA are set to meet with an arbitrator on July 16.
