The Big-Spending Sailors

It is scarcely surprising that the political clout of such big and powerful unions as the Teamsters and the United Mine Workers is often headline matter. But in recent weeks the unions that have been making the most news are neither large nor well known. They are a handful of obscure maritime organizations whose names and numbers are hardly impressive: the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, or MEBA (9,500 members), the Seafarers International (12,000), the National Maritime Union (45,000) and the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots (9,500).

Buck Passers. The maritime unions were propelled into the spotlight in late September when Special Prosecutor Charles Ruff began investigating reports that President Ford had made illegal use of union campaign contributions. Ford had indeed received legal campaign contributions from the unions, and Ruff last week cleared him of any wrongdoing regarding these funds. Thus the net effect of the whole episode may be to emphasize a fact long familiar in Washington: the little maritime unions are some of the biggest and boldest political spenders around. "No one is busier on Capitol Hill," says a congressional staffer who handles merchant marine matters. "The maritime guys are everywhere, passing out bucks like there is no tomorrow."

So far in campaign '76, the four maritime unions have donated more than $1.4 million to at least 170 individual candidates. Reportedly, they have another $1 million ready to hand out before Election Day. All told, their political contributions will be the largest of any interest group except the American Medical Association, the dairy organizations and the AFL-CIO itself. MEBA accounts for 70% of the maritime unions' political largesse; its members shell out $56 a year each in campaign contributions, compared with less than $1 on the average for members of other trade unions.

Why do the maritime unions contribute so heavily? The answer is simply that they need ever greater federal subsidies in order to keep the dwindling U.S. merchant fleet afloat. As Paul Hall, the crusty president of the Seafarers, puts it, "Politics is pork chops."

On their own, the 13 surviving U.S. merchant shipping lines and 14 shipyards could never survive. Partly as a result of high wages won by the unions, the U.S. long ago virtually priced itself out of the ocean cargo transport business. According to the U.S. Maritime Administration, the daily operating cost on a 90,000-dead-weight-ton U.S. ship is $14,300, v. $10,800 for a Norwegian and $9,700 for some Liberian-flag ships. Over the years, dozens of American shipowners have switched their colors to the so-called flags of convenience, notably Panama and Liberia, whose regulations allow owners to pay lower wages and require fewer costly safety measures. The result has been a long, steep decline in the U.S. merchant fleet; from its position of undisputed No. 1 in 1945, it has plummeted to No. 10, behind even Italy, France and Japan. Today U.S. ships carry only 5% of American foreign trade.

Despite huge federal subsidies ($502 million in fiscal '76), U.S. maritime employment has continued to fall; today there are only 27,000 seafaring jobs v. 66,000 ten years ago. One reason: new ships corning into service are twice as big and twice as fast as those they replace and need far fewer crew members. The unions thus battle to keep every job they can. MEBA President Jesse Calhoon has set up his union's own engineer-training institute in Baltimore, and its graduates receive preferential treatment for the few available engineering berths in the U.S. merchant marine.

That is only one example of the kind of favor the maritime unions have been able to grab for themselves. In 1970 former President Richard Nixon signed the Merchant Marine Act, which provided federal subsidies for the construction of 300 new ships in U.S. yards within the next ten years. In 1974 the unions scored an even greater coup; they persuaded Congress to pass a bill that would require 30% of all U.S. petroleum imports to be carried in U.S. tankers by 1977. The bill was an especially important piece of revenge for the unions: they deeply resent the big U.S. oil companies for having placed their supertankers under foreign registry and hired non-U.S. crewmen.

Good Friends. But later, President Ford vetoed the bill; he feared that the higher transport costs in U.S. ships would only incite further inflation, then running above 11%. That irked the maritime men, especially MEBA'S Calhoon. Says a top AFL-CIO official: "Jesse knows you've got to have friends in this business, and he's good at finding them." After Ford's apostasy, Calhoon threw the union's support behind Washington Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, who for defense reasons is a strong advocate of a healthy American merchant marine. Later, when Jackson's presidential chances began to fade, Calhoon approached another potential friend: Jimmy Carter. After several meetings, Carter gave Calhoon a letter in which he pledged, among other things, to help the U.S. merchant marine "win a right to haul a major portion of our own foreign cargo."

That is what Calhoon and his maritime cohorts want most of all--a guaranteed share of U.S. trade. Such a guarantee might rejuvenate the American merchant fleet, but in the long run it would harm the nation's overall trading position by making U.S. exports more expensive. In return for Carter's promise, the union promptly raised $200,000 for his campaign.

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