Opinion ID: 526976
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Operations at the Port of New York

Text: 2 The only real dispute between the parties is appellants' status as employers under the MPPAA, and the facts necessary to its resolution are largely agreed upon. To put this issue in proper perspective, it is necessary to examine briefly the unique history of the longshore industry in the Port of New York. 3 Appellants' vessels called at the Port's marine terminals that are owned and operated by stevedoring companies engaged in the business of loading and unloading ships. A registered pool of longshore employees is available to work the vessels of any carrier; the longshoremen constitute a floating work force whose employers change frequently and whose seniority and eligibility for fringe benefits are determined on the basis of their work throughout the Port, not by attachment to any particular company. Carriers provide the work and their ships the workplace. The longshoremen's union negotiates collective bargaining agreements with the stevedoring companies and the carriers that establish the terms and conditions of the longshoremen's employment in the Port. 4 In litigation concerning whether the Rules on Containers and the work preservation provisions in the longshore contract constituted unlawful secondary activity under Secs. 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act, the carriers were recognized to be longshore employers. See NLRB v. Int'l Longshoremen's Ass'n, 447 U.S. 490, 496 n. 10, 100 S.Ct. 2305, 2309 n. 10, 65 L.Ed.2d 289 (1980); id. at 499 n. 13, 100 S.Ct. at 2311 n. 13; id. at 512, 100 S.Ct. at 2317 (1980); see also NLRB v. Int'l Longshoremen's Ass'n, 473 U.S. 61, 74 n. 12, 105 S.Ct. 3045, 3053 n. 12, 87 L.Ed.2d 47 (1985). In the Port of New York, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has certified the New York Shipping Association, Inc. (NYSA) as a bargaining unit. Although NYSA's membership consists of carriers, stevedoring companies, carrier agents, and other maritime concerns, the NYSA has historically been under the control of its carrier members. 5 The obligation for funding the costs of the longshoremen's fringe benefits has been imposed by contract upon the carriers, not on the stevedoring companies. The bitter collective bargaining conflict between the carriers and the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) sparked by the introduction of containerized methods of cargo handling was finally resolved in 1968 after a lengthy strike and the intervention of a presidential mediator. The labor accord reached required the union to relinquish its demands for limits on containerization in exchange for, among other things, the establishment of a program of enhanced fringe benefits to compensate longshoremen for the effects of the job displacement caused by containerization. 6 Thus, the advent of containerization and the execution of the 1968 labor contract brought about significant new developments in the carriers' status in the Port of New York. From 1968 to the present the carriers not only continued to negotiate the terms and conditions of longshore employment and the level of longshore employee benefits, but also directly undertook the obligation to pay--and did in fact pay--the contributions necessary to fund these benefits. The key feature of the assessment system in effect in the Port of New York for the past two decades is that the obligation for longshore fringe benefit assessments is placed directly upon the vessel carriers based on the tons of cargo loaded and unloaded by longshoremen from their vessels. 7 Korea and Delta engaged in steamship carrier operations at the Port from 1967 to 1985 and 1978 to 1983 respectively, undertaking a variety of operations which included the loading and unloading of their general cargo and container vessels. Neither company directly employed its own labor force to service its ships, and neither operated its own marine terminal facility. When appellants' ships entered the Port, they called at terminals operated by the stevedoring companies where their vessels loaded and discharged their cargo with the aid of longshoremen directly employed by the stevedoring companies.