It’s deja vu all over again with a pair of companion bills currently before the Hawaii Legislature seeking to impose an unnecessary labor mandate on the barge industry.

The bills would require the use of stevedore companies, which employ union longshoremen, for local maritime line-handling: House Bill 1936/Senate Bill 2746, titled “Relating to Harbor Safety.”

Although superficially different, the current bills have the same intent as the 2023 measures, HB 714/SB 824, “Relating to Mooring Lines.” They were opposed by many of the state’s maritime operators and merchant cargo owners — i.e., shippers — for commercial reasons, criticized by three state government departments for regulatory reasons, and didn’t pass.

I described the 2023 bills in a column last year (“Dock ‘line-handling’ is labor work issue, not for legislators,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, April 13, 2023); it addressed the commercial issues that would invariably cause higher consumer prices particularly on the neighbor islands.

Line-handling is the mooring of vessels to a pier and the reverse, unmooring. Stevedore companies have traditionally performed this service for large self-propelled oceangoing ships.

Shoreside line-handlers are needed by large ships because their crewmembers cannot access the wharf when mooring and unmooring. This doesn’t require a statutory mandate.

Line-handlers are not needed for tugs and barges. Tug crews safely access and perform barge line-handling on the wharf and have performed this task in Hawaii for more than a century.

The legislation was drafted by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and introduced by friendly legislators. The intent is to foist a stevedore line-handling mandate squarely on the tug-and-barge segment of the maritime industry. The 2024 legislation uses the stealthy approach of “harbor safety” to induce the Legislature into passing the mandate benefiting their members with plum job assignments.

Enactment of the legislation would result in state- imposed featherbedding increasing the cost and reducing the productivity of barge transport by requiring more employees than necessary and time-consuming compliance procedures. The economic impact would be widespread as barges provide virtually all interisland surface cargo transportation.

Furthermore, it’s an intervention into a private-sector labor issue. The longshoremen have not established their jurisdiction for barge line-handling through collective bargaining, and are instead asking government to impose it by law. This is unconstitutional.

As of March 1, the state Senate and House committees of jurisdiction have passed out amended versions of their respective bills, which have crossed over. To enact a law, agreement on a final bill will be required, possibly in a conference committee.

The Senate’s latest version (SB 2746, Senate Draft 2) mandates line-handling to be “performed by a stevedoring company.” It contains an exemption allowing “all personnel conducting the mooring of vessels” (i.e., tug crewmembers) providing they are “certified and recertified on the State’s health and safety guidelines” and the tug operator (i.e., the crewmembers’ employer) is “a signatory to a collective bargaining agreement.”

The exemption is predicated on two criteria involving regulatory matters where federal jurisdiction is paramount and the state lacks authority. Maritime workplace safety is a federal jurisdiction including for stevedoring (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and onboard commercial vessels (U.S. Coast Guard). The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that states cannot regulate private-sector union issues due to constitutional federal preemption under the National Labor Relations Act.

Among the other problems with the legislation are its assertion of several erroneous stipulations. For example: “certification” of stevedores (none in the U.S.); “authorized” stevedoring companies (no authorization process); Hawaii Public Utilities Commission regulation of “trans-Pacific” ocean trade (it’s a federal jurisdiction); and, “manifested cargo” in domestic trade (not required).

The Legislature should not approve this fatally-flawed legislation.

Michael N. Hansen is president of the Hawaii Shippers’ Council representing merchant cargo owners, and an independent consultant on maritime business.