Media Gets Labor Wrong Again

The Bloomberg News headline announced, “LA, Long Beach Port Terminal Closures Stretch to Second Day” about a lack of workers on the second shift on April 6 (Passover). Then reported “The largest container gateway into the US remained closed Friday as a shortage of dockworker labor that halted operations Thursday evening went into a second day”. That second day was Good Friday and of course Sunday was Easter. Of course, the implication was that the longshore union was pulling some kind of labor action to influence the contract negotiations ongoing since July.

What the corporate media got wrong is that they based their reporting mainly from the Pacific Maritime Association’s press release and did not check with any labor sources before reporting the shocking news that “ILWU Local 13 withheld labor again for this morning’s shift. The action by the union has effectively shut down the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach,” the Pacific Maritime Association said in a statement.”

This very same news was repeated in the LA Daily News, OC Register, the Daily Breeze, then other industry news outlets and finally summarized in the TV News– without any extra reporting nor verification by local reporters. This was like lemmings jumping off the cliff, not good reporting. One doesn’t need to be a genius to figure out what really happened and to call out Laura Curtis’ reporting for Bloomberg as baloney! It is explanatory of how corporate media works by reiterating a “scoop” and then just multiplying it over and over before anyone ever questions it.

Here’s what they missed, April 6 which was both the first Thursday and the beginning of Passover, and by contract a legal stop work day for the union to meet usually in the evening or the second shift. This was an important meeting as the Local13 of the ILWU had just elected a new president Gary Herrera and the union voted at that meeting to add 500 new members to its regular workforce.

The very next day was Good Friday and is still a part of Passover and the following Sunday is Easter, a contracted holiday and one just might presume that some workers took a four-day weekend. And with the decline in cargo that’s been diverted to the East Coast since the supply-chain fiasco last year there’s actually been less work as volumes are off by some 40%. The workers have been complaining that there’s not enough work and yet the PMA claimed that, “The ILWU has taken a concerted action to withhold labor” in an April 7 statement.

This version then got picked up on LinkedIn News by another reporter who didn’t verify any of it and what you have, is a one source story based on some propaganda put out by the PMA who has been dragging their feet in the extended contract negotiations.

Responses to the PMA and the LinkedIn reporter on Twitter were both harsh and blunt.

“Why don’t you issue a statement about how you’ve been stonewalling the Union for almost an entire YEAR now playing mind games walking out of negotiations multiple times? All the while the Union has been moving cargo at record paces and in GOOD FAITH with NO CONTRACT”.

In fact, on multiple occasions Gene Seroka, the director of the POLA has praised the work of the ILWU for their dedication to moving cargo during the COVID19 pandemic and then the resulting congestion in the San Pedro Bay ports.

One worker on Twitter asked, “what more can you ask of a workforce?”

Finally in response to the accusations and upon request from me the Local 13 issued a clarification:

ILWU Local 13 Members Remain Willing and Able to Work

Longshore workers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (Ports) are still hard at work and remain committed to moving the nation’s cargo.

San Pedro, CA (April 7, 2023) On the evening of Thursday, April 6, 2023, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 13 held its monthly membership meeting as is its contractual right. At the meeting, outgoing President Ramon Ponce de Leon, Jr. swore in incoming President Gary Herrera. Several thousand union members attended the monthly meeting.

On Friday, April 7, 2023, union members who observe religious holidays took the opportunity to celebrate with their families. Cargo operations are ongoing as longshore workers at the Ports remain on the job.

The PMA went on to accuse the ILWU of, “coordinated actions… occurring while negotiations for the new coastwise contract continue”. And that “These actions undermine the confidence in the West Coast ports.”

What the PMA’s statement reveals is their nervousness about how the contract negotiations are stalled and what the unintended consequences are of their news release that cause the very “undermining of confidence” that they are afraid of happening.

While most readers won’t think too much about this confusion over the news report, it opens the door to consideration of how other types of news gets misreported by the failure of corporate owned media companies, who have gutted their newsrooms and become heavily reliant upon being news aggregators and not news creators or fact checking the stories they publish. I’m thinking of almost every online news platform– Google, Yahoo, and Apple News and not forgetting to mention those like Newsmax and OAN that are blatantly making up “the news”. Should I even mention Tucker Carlson at Fox?

All I can say is that this paper has one of the smallest reporting staffs, we know the local issues and how they relate the bigger news that matter to our readers. And when people say, “Why don’t you run more rightwing articles to balance out the perspective of your newspaper?” I tell them you got the Daily Breeze (owned by The Southern California News Group (SCNG) which is operated by Media News Group (MNG), the nation’s second largest newspaper company and one of the largest providers of digital news and information in the U.S. SCNG was created in March 2016 when MNG acquired Freedom Communications). And there are a hundred other news organizations that carry the water for those same political interests. The reason why people read us is because we don’t!

Only six media conglomerates control 90% of the media industry, and around 232 media executives control the information that reaches the American population. These corporations have a net worth of over $430 billion.