As part of what it calls its “Battle for our Benefits”
campaign, several hundred International Longshore & Warehouse union members
past and present turned up at the PMA Southern California offices in Long
Beach, California, while dozens more were at the Association’s offices in Tacoma,
Wash. and elsewhere up and down the coast to protest a medical insurance
program adopted by the PMA in January.
In Long Beach, scores of workers at Pier B walked off the
job to join the one-day protest, resulting in a work stoppage at the terminal.
The adjoining Port of Los Angeles, however, reported no stoppage issues
associated with the protest.
The Port of Tacoma also reported no work stoppages, which
was in contrast to a similar protest conducted in April that resulted in
Tacoma’s largest terminal, Washington United, being shut down.
The picketers say they were spurred to protest by the new
insurance program’s lateness in paying medical bills. Although some doctors and
health care providers are being paid promptly by the association’s benefit
management company, Zenith American Solutions, others have been forced into
collections because of months-long processing delays, according to numerous ILWU
members throughout the West Coast.
However, the PMA, which contracts with ILWU labor, decried
the pickets in a statement, saying that the longshore workers were “waging the
wrong battle” and that the delays in claim payments were related to medical
fraud and abuse, including billing for services that weren’t provided; charging
for non-covered services like cosmetic surgery; and inflating patients’ bills with
unnecessary charges.
“Rather than picketing employers and disrupting terminal
operations as part of its ‘Battle for Our Benefits’ work action, the ILWU
members should join PMA in taking aim at tens of millions of dollars in fraud
and abuse in the union’s health care plan,” the statement read in part.
The union and PMA are scheduled to debate the issue before
an arbitrator on July 16, according to union spokesman Greg Mitre.
