A local dockworkers union’s recent federal appeals court win in a labor dispute with the S.C. Ports Authority (SPA) is part of a historic battle over the handling of cargo that began after the Civil War.
Following a series of unprecedented post-Civil War strikes on Charleston’s waterfront, newly freed men organized in 1869 the Longshoremen’s Protective Union Association (LPUA).
LPUA set a legacy for today’s International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1422, an affiliate of the International Longshoremen’s Association based in New Jersey.
In a 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently sided with the ILA and Local 1422 in a dispute that centers on whether union workers only or a mix of state employees and union members can load and unload container ships at North Charleston’s new Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal.
While the court battle drags on, the $1.5 billion port has been mostly idle, making some wonder about how wise the state was in using taxpayer dollars.
In denying the SPA’s appeal, the court affirmed the union’s right to hold every job at the Leatherman terminal under a master contract the ILA signed earlier with the shipping lines. The state, however, wants a hybrid model of state-employed crane and machinery operators and union workers for all other positions. The hybrid model is used at the Wando Welch and North Charleston terminals.
The union and court maintain the Leatherman terminal is exempt from the hybrid model because it is a new facility that opened in March 2021 and is not part of a revised 2018 master contract that expires next year.
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 union wants $300 million in damages.
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 are now calling on the Wando and North Charleston terminals.
More appeals possible
Brandon Charocak, communications director for S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, said, “The governor remains committed to defending South Carolina’s ports, jobs, and businesses against big labor unions and their threatening tactics, which have hamstrung the economies of many other states across the country. He will continue to support efforts to appeal this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court as quickly as possible.”
In the appeal, the ports authority calls the ILA lawsuit an illegal move to get “lift work” at the Leatherman terminal and crane operator jobs that ILA members have never held and the USMX was powerless to give.
“We are disappointed in the 4th Circuit’s majority opinion,” SPA president and CEO Barbara Melvin said. “We are reviewing the opinion and weighing all options for appeal.”
Melvin said the “Leatherman Terminal is a significant supply chain asset for all port-dependent businesses in South Carolina and beyond, and our longstanding hybrid operating model works.”
ILA 1422 president Charles Brave, however, boasted state workers “can’t beat us at what we do.
When we get that Hugh Leatherman terminal, it is going to put pressure on the Wando and North Charleston terminals because we are going to save the state a ton of money because they won’t be able to compete with us.
“We are getting people certified for the [crane operator] jobs at the Hugh Leatherman terminal,” Brave revealed. The SPA and the governor “are making the public think we are going to displace people at all of the terminals. That is not so,” Brave explained. “We are only talking about the master contract jobs at the Hugh Leatherman terminal. We walk by faith but not by sight,” he said, citing 2 Corinthians 5:7.
Battle on the docks
The ILA 1422 is part of a group of ILA local affiliates that represents longshoremen and office workers — clerks and checkers — and maintenance employees who work on ships at port terminals from Maine to Texas. The predominantly Black members of ILA 1422 once unloaded cargo by hand before the 1970s advent of containerized cargo. They labored in jobs few wanted because the work involved lifting and rolling heavy cotton bales, banana stalks, rawhide bundles and other loose cargo called “break bulk.”
If the appeals court had not ruled in the union’s favor, the ILA was prepared to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Brave said. With ILA support, Brave said ILA 1422 is in a much better position to wage a prolonged court fight with the state than the longshoremen who gained their freedom after the Civil War.
After a series of unprecedented strikes on Charleston’s waterfront, newly freed men and other free men of color chartered the LPUA with bipartisan support from the S.C. General Assembly during Reconstruction that ushered Black representation in state government after 1865.
In 1875, The News and Courier called the union “the most powerful organization of the colored laboring class in South Carolina.” By 1900, the union lost its charter. But in 1936, Charlestonian George Washington German organized Black longshoremen to establish ILA 1422, according to the South Carolina Encyclopedia.
German, a third-generation dock worker who served as president until 1969, got support from ILA attorney William Morrison, whose grandfather owned German’s grandfather until freeing him in 1861. Morrison served as Charleston’s mayor from 1947 to 1959.
German helped move ILA 1422 into the city’s business and political circles as it became the backbone of Charleston’s Black middle class.
German was a visionary, said Pastor Kenneth J.J. Edmondson, German’s grandson who joined the union in 1976. German started the pension plan for the workers he called “my boys,” Edmondson said. It has grown into one of the largest private pension funds in South Carolina.
Clarence Baxter of Charleston, who joined the union when he was 19 years old, said German’s leadership defined ILA 1422 as one of the most efficient port labor forces in the world.
Baxter said, “If you didn’t do your job, [German] would tell the foremen to get another man because we want to live up to the contract.”
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