In a letter sent to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) on November 16, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which comprises some seventy ocean carriers and terminals at twenty-night West Coast ports, proposed extending its contract with the union for an additional year. The current contract expires on July 1, 2022, and is itself the result of a prior three-year extension. Originally, it would’ve expired in 2019, but the majority of ballots cast by ILWU members favored the extension in exchange for a wage and pension increase.

That won’t be happening this time: ILWU president Willie Adams issued a same-day response, addressed to PMA president James McKenna, declining the extension.

“It is especially ironic to ask labor to pass on collective bargaining,” wrote Adams, “when there is an historic labor shortage outside of the ports caused precisely because these other workers (for example, truck drivers and workers at distribution centers) do not have the types of wages and working conditions attained through collective bargaining that persuade people to stay and commit their lives to tough physical labor.”