ILWU protestors picket in front of PMA offices Monday. Photos by Brian Addison.

Longshoremen from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) who work for the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) took a day off from unloading container ships at the Port of Long Beach Monday to protest changes in healthcare processing that they say has left workers and their families with delayed or denied payments.

Members of the ILWU collectively took a contracted day off and arrived at the PMA headquarters on Ocean Blvd. to picket at 9AM. By noon, hundreds of workers with friends and family began circling outside the offices at 300 Oceangate chanting, “Pay our bills!” and “Who’s port? Our port!”

At the center of the issue, protestors said, was a third-party claims processor and fraud assessor that PMA brought in to handle healthcare requests. 

Against the objections of the ILWU, PMA selected Zenith American Solutions to replace CIGNA as its claim processing company set to handle the ILWU-PMA Coastwise Indemnity Plan. ILWU vied for Taft-Hartley Healthcare Plans and the fight eventually faced an arbitrator who sided with PMA. Workers say that the now-lengthy process to get claims approved has backed up services and led to denied payments. 

Protests have already occurred previously, with a clash back in April at the PMA offices in San Francisco, where ILWU workers–like the ones here in Long Beach–were frustrated at lengthened delays and so-called red tape that have resulted in unpaid or delayed medical bills

Many of the protestors here in Long Beach offered to speak off the record, citing that they were there as a group, not through an individual effort.

“This isn’t a strike, just a protest,” said one longshoreman. “We took a day off under our contract–and also under that contract are our health benefits which PMA is blatantly denying… Zenith sent my medical claims to their Fraud Department. Do I look like a criminal?”

The protest led the PMA offices here in Long Beach to completely shutdown, citing an “illegal work stoppage.” Wade Gates, a spokesperson for PMA, said that the fraud administrator brought in identified tens of millions of dollars in possible health insurance abuses, which would inflate patient bills.

“Instead of picketing, union members should be joining the association in cracking down on the abuses,” Gates said.

There have been no changes to the workers’ health insurance plan since a 2008 agreement between the two sides.

ILWU and PMA are set to meet with an arbitrator on July 16.

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