After years of negotiating and organizing to fight off takeaways, Port of Oakland workers have a new contract! Late in the night of Tuesday, April 4, Port workers and management signed a tentative agreement, which port workers then overwhelmingly voted to accept.

The deal took years to finalize, as port management dragged the process out. Port management was insisting on unfair, unnecessary concessions, including adding a no-strike clause to the contract. Members had to build their strength to fight off this anti-union attack, including preparing a full-day, multi-session strike school session for Wednesday, April 5, with a strike vote scheduled for the day as well.

Throughout the campaign, Port members showed their unity through coordinated “purple-up” days, flyering to distribute a petition at the airport, and informational picketing at the airport and at the port itself. In the end, the constant pressure exerted by these members and the resolve of the bargaining team was able to get Port management to agree to a fair contract. During the campaign, the Port custodians also got a gigantic arbitration win around being assigned outside their bidded areas, which will get the custodians thousands of dollars. 

The contract is a three-year deal with 14.5% in total raises, retroactive to the expiration of the previous contract; no no-strike clause; massively improved disciplinary language that no longer allows Port management to skip contractual progressive disciplinary processes because of so-called “gross violations”; and other substantial improvements.

Joey Friedman is a carpenter with the Port of Oakland and serves as the chapter president. He said, “This is a good contract that is fair for both sides. Our bargaining team and membership were forced to work tirelessly to get this done. Management was strongly opposed, and we were only able to get a solid contract because of the tremendous patience and unity on the part of our membership and the hard work of our bargaining team. It’s no coincidence that we signed our tentative agreement with management late at night, the day before our strike school was scheduled. The united front we maintained made it clear to the Port that a strike, showing the community what kind of issues they have, was going to cost them dearly.

“We stuck together throughout the process, and having a bargaining team that truly represented the entire diversity of workers at the Port, who are spread out geographically and very wide-ranging in terms of the work we do, made a huge difference guaranteeing a good contract for all the members.

“No contract is perfect, but our bargaining team worked hard and the unity of the membership and the threat of a looming strike got this done. We got a COLA that will help us to keep up with the expenses of living in a very expensive area. We kept some important contract language in place, including maintaining our right to strike, which the Port was dead set on taking away from us, and we added a huge win on disciplinary language.

“It was a hard fight, and management dragged it out to an unconscionable degree. In late 2021, they told us it was an emergency and a high priority to get our contract done before expiration, but then they would often go a month without even meeting with us, and we didn’t sign a deal until April of 2023.

“I hope we proved that collaboration is possible, and that we can move forward in a more positive way with them, because there’s still plenty of work to do. We have a few side letters in place to work through with this bargaining team, and we’re already thinking about some improvements we could make in our next contract.”