Amid vendors and customers at Pier 33, some 50 Alcatraz Cruises workers and organizers gathered on Sunday to push through the first contract of the cruise lines’ nascent union.
Six months after being officially certified as a union, the first contract between the Alcatraz Union and Alcatraz City Cruises is stalled. At issue is the company’s insistence on classifying its roughly 10 captains and maintenance supervisors as managers, thereby leaving them out of the union.
With the iconic white ferry at their backs, workers on the picket line chanted “All of us or none of us!” and “The captain’s union!”
“We’re trying to get equal benefits for all of our employees. And we’d like to be one of those employees that’s represented by the union here,” said Brian Dobruck, the only captain not involved in the Sunday’s hectic cruise schedule, which gave him time to show up to the rally as a representative. Not incidentally, Dobruck was also the first person to call Inlandboatmen’s Union, a chapter of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, for unionization consultation.
Workers have said that the cruise line wants to keep captains like Dobruck out of the union because of their effective leadership skills.
The National Labor Relations Act defines a supervisor as any individual who has authority “to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward or discipline other employees.”
While Alcatraz City Cruises maintains that the captains are supervisors, the Alcatraz Union sees it differently. “Our captains here didn’t hire me. They can’t fire me. They can’t discipline me. They don’t handle our scheduling,” said Jack Calvin, a deckhand who’s been actively involved in the unionization effort. “They have no actual managerial duties. And the company never considered them managers until we came together, and we formed our union.”
A general manager of Alcatraz City Cruises declined to comment on the situation, despite being present to observe the rally. “We’re not able to speak on behalf of the company, because we have ongoing negotiations,” she said. An email requesting comments from Alcatraz City Cruises has not yet been returned.
Alcatraz workers were officially certified as a union last October after winning an election last September by 52 votes to 11, and the first contract negotiations took place in late January, according to Evan McLaughlin, an organizer for the ILWU in Northern California. So far, negotiations have not touched on wage issues, focusing mainly on more basic parts of the contract, like discipline and safety rules.
Dobruck has spent the last 10 years as a captain at Alcatraz, after leaving his position as a captain in Hawaii. “Personally, I’m doing this to try to support all of our employees, all the people I work with,” said Dobruck. “The contract only requires them to give certain benefits to certain groups of employees. So I think it’s only fair that all of the people that work here get equal benefits.”
Dobruck hopes the union will win workers a more predictable schedule. At present, he said, Alcatraz gives workers two weeks’ notice on their schedules. But that’s not enough. “You don’t know if you’re going to have two days off together. You don’t know if you’re going to have five days of work or three days of work. You have no control,” he said. “It’s difficult for them to have a healthy family life.”
At the last contract negotiation meeting on April 3, Alcatraz Union representatives were frustrated when told that the company would not be available to meet with them again until May 25, according to Robert Estrada, IBU’s San Francisco regional director.
District 3 Supervisor and Board President Aaron Peskin showed up at the gathering, in his customary weekend footwear of flip-flops, to express his support. “We don’t wait until May 25. We get in the room tomorrow. We work it out,” he told the workers. “An injury to one is an injury to all. …The captains are inextricably a part of this organization, and they must be at the table.”
“At some point, this organization’s lease with the Port of San Francisco is going to come up. And the Board of Supervisors that I’ve sat on for most of the last quarter century is going to have to vote on that. I can’t vote on that if you guys aren’t honored,” Peskin said.
“At the Board of Supervisors, all 11 members of this board will do whatever Marina and Robert tell us,” he said, referring to the regional directors of the union.
Alcatraz Cruises is part of the Hornblower Group, a San Francisco-based international travel arrangement company. In 2006, some 1,000 workers rallied to support 50 Alcatraz ferry workers who lost their jobs after Hornblower replaced the previously-unionized firm. And this year, on several occasions, a representative from Hornblower showed up at the union contract negotiation table with the Alcatraz Union, according to Robert.
As the rally ended on Sunday, workers pledged they would be back if their demands weren’t honored. “We will be back!” they shouted.