AMO Currents - Tentative AMO-MEBA settlement ends Interlake contract case, but MEBA remains under AFL-CIO’s Article XX sanctions for raiding on lakes

Tentative AMO-MEBA settlement ends Interlake contract case, but MEBA remains under AFL-CIO Article XX sanctions for raiding on lakes AMO Currents - Tentative AMO-MEBA settlement ends Interlake contract case, but MEBA remains under AFL-CIO’s Article XX sanctions for raiding on lakes

Print | Close Window

AMO Currents - Posted: August 29, 2008

Tentative AMO-MEBA settlement ends Interlake contract case, but MEBA remains under AFL-CIO’s Article XX sanctions for raiding on lakes

The Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association and its benefit funds must pay American Maritime Officers a combined $2.5 million in damages for interfering with a valid collective bargaining agreement between AMO and Interlake Steamship Co. on the Great Lakes in July 2003.

The damages were specified in a tentative settlement between AMO and MEBA August 18. The settlement agreement would end the “tortious interference” case brought by AMO against MEBA, current and former MEBA officials, and six MEBA benefit funds in the Lucas County (Ohio) Court of Common Pleas in Toledo in December 2005.

In its complaint, AMO charged that the defendants had interfered unlawfully with a valid collective bargaining agreement between AMO and Interlake Steamship Co. on the Great Lakes in July 2003. MEBA signed a 10-year contract with Interlake in secrecy while the AMO-Interlake collective bargaining agreement remained in effect. Both the AMO-Interlake collective bargaining agreement and the Interlake-MEBA contract covered seven self-unloading bulk carriers.

The tentative AMO-MEBA settlement agreement — which is subject to approval by the court — would not remove sanctions imposed on MEBA by the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations under Article XX of the AFL-CIO Constitution in two separate AMO-MEBA jurisdictional disputes involving a tug-barge and a bulk carrier operated on the lakes by Interlake Steamship Co.

“The tentative settlement agreement provides for less in damages than AMO had sought but more than MEBA was able to pay, given that union’s current distressed financial condition,” said AMO National President Tom Bethel. “I was told reliably that a pre-trial settlement was preferable to pursuit of the case, which would have gone through multiple appeals all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States at significant expense to AMO, with no guarantee that MEBA and its benefit funds would be able to pay.”

Under the tentative settlement agreement, MEBA must pay AMO $1.25 million within 30 days of the settlement date, and the MEBA benefit funds must pay AMO $1.25 million within 30 days of the settlement date.

Bethel said additional information and comment “will be provided when the settlement agreement is approved by the court.”