Bias suit nixed over dock hiring

ALBANY — New York is on the losing end of a near decade long attempt to prove dockworker unions used discriminatory hiring practices.

Chief Administrative Law Judge Lilliana Estrella-Castillo earlier this month dismissed a lawsuit filed by the State’s Division of Human Rights dating back to 2012 accusing the International Longshoremen’s Association, the New York Shipping Association, the Metropolitan Marine Maintenance Contractors’ Association and others of boxing out minorities and women.

Estrella-Castillo excoriated the state for failing to prove the unions’ hiring practices caused harm to anyone and filing its complaint too late, and ultimately decided that New York simply doesn’t have jurisdiction over the bistate Waterfront Commission that regulates workers on the harbor docks that serve both New York and New Jersey.

“All this did was, it was a cloud over the industry’s head for a period of time,” said Kevin Marrinan, general counsel for the ILA and three locals based in New York. “There was not one witness that came in and said they were denied the right to be hired.”

The decision comes two years after 17 public hearing sessions were held.

The initial complaint was filed by the state back in 2012 in regards to the hiring of temporary baggage handlers and work stoppages at cruise terminals in Manhattan and Brooklyn a year earlier.

While the state argued that union members refused to work alongside the temps based on bias, Estrella-Castillo found that race played no role in the incidents.

“The work stoppages were motivated by concerns about work scarcity and that the temporary baggage handlers were not members of [the union],” Estrella-Castillo wrote.

The unions argued that the basis for the suit was a hiring plan set forth back in 2011 by the Waterfront Commission meant to boost diversity among stevedores, dockworkers and longshoremen that was abandoned soon after.

Estrella-Castillo noted that the commission “exercises near-total control over hiring at the port,” not the unions.

In tearing apart the state’s allegations, the judge noted that lawyers for the Division of Human Rights failed to prove there was anything wrong with the unions’ hiring practices because “it did not identify a specific discriminatory employment practice” and noted that “the statistical evidence it relies on is fatally flawed in several respects.” She also opined that the complaint was not filed within a one-year window and that the state simply “lacks jurisdiction over the Waterfront Commission.”

The State’s Division of Human Rights, which did not respond to a request for comment, has until Friday to file any objections.