Towboat Pilots Strike Nationwide
A strike by towboat pilots and captains has not slowed river or port traffic, but the ports could see more changes after the weekend.
Scores of towboat pilots across America called a strike Friday against what they cited as dangerous working conditions such as overloaded barges and a paycheck that doesn't reflect a demanding schedule.
"It's eight months out of the year, 12 hours a day, every day, 12 hours we're with no overtime pay," Dickey Mathes of the Pilots Agree Union told CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers.
Mathes' fledgling union, which represents one third of the estimated 3,000 river captains, announced the strike after the towing companies who hire them refused even to sit down and talk. Instead, the companies opted to send letters opposing unionization.
But officials said Sunday that the strike has not yet made a substantial impact on shipping.
"The strike has had relatively no effect," said Paul Werner, mid-continent vice president of a barge and tow operators' trade group called American Waterways Operators.
About 90 boats were sidelined temporarily Saturday and Sunday, Werner said. About 3,800 towboats and tugboats ply the inland waterways, so fewer than 3 percent were affected even briefly, he said.
On Saturday, at least 81 towboats were pushed along the banks of the Mississippi River, from the mouth of the river to Minnesota, and on shoals of the Intracoastal Waterway, the Coast Guard said.
Twenty-five percent of this country's cargo-including chemicals, coal, gasoline and grain-travel by river. A total shutdown could mean disaster at shipping centers.
"We want our respect back, the benefits that have been taken from us," said towboat captain Kelly Mason.
Werner said there is no weekend lull in his area, from St. Louis up into Minnesota. "We're dealing with what we would call the line haul traffic. These boats and barges run essentially 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So weekends have little bearing on that."
But strike damage could compound rapidly if the International Longshoremen's Association, whose members unload ships and barges, refuses to cross the pilots' picket lines.
©1998, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved