Elections of Officers and Constitutional Amendments Referendum
December 2005-January 2006
West Coast Sailors
Confirming the Sailors?Union?s opposition to a provision in the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2005 (H.R. 889) that would allow U.S.-flag shipowners on international voyages to employ foreign nationals as maintenance and repair ?riding gangs,? the United States Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security have issued strongly worded position papers also in opposition to this House of Representatives passed legislation.
Legislation that could decimate the American workforce in U.S.-flag ships in the international trades has pitted most of maritime labor against a coalition of avaricious shipowners.
Katrina, President Bush suspended the Jones Act on September 1, to allow foreign-built, foreign-flagged and foreign-crewed tankers to carry cargo between American ports to ?help distribute oil and gasoline where it is needed.?
The membership of the Sailors? Union gained additional work when the Maritime Administration on July 28, announced new contracts for vessels in the government?s Ready Reserve Force (RRF) fleet.
Resolving an issue that has haunted sailors aboard its ships for over a year, American President Lines, Ltd. notified its contracted seagoing Unions on July 13 that effective October 1, 2005, it would again be operating the APL U.S.-flag fleet directly through an affiliated company, APL Marine Services, Ltd.
In a coastwise vote held at Union Headquarters on June 17, and at the Seattle, Wilmington and Honolulu Branches on June 20, the membership of the Sailors? Union of the Pacific unanimously voted in favor of authorizing a strike against Matson Navigation Company?if necessary.
In a misguided and muddled opinion, Judge Martin Jenkins of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco on May 16, denied Patriot Contract Services? motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the transfer of SUP-crewed LMSR vessels to AMSEA.
The United States will come under new diplomatic pressure to ease, or surrender, its domestic shipping laws during forthcoming multilateral service trade negotiations.
In a bold move that blocks other companies from entering the Hawai?i container trade and continues its service to Guam, Matson Navigation Company announced that it has entered into cash-on-delivery purchase contracts for two new containerships.
Among the Union's objectives is "to support a journal which shall voice the sentiments of the seafaring class, and through its columns seek to maintain the knowledge of and interest in maritime affairs." The first issue of the West Coast Sailors, in June of 1937, noted that "Common sense, fearlessly applied, brings success to a Union."