City docker to head International Longshoremen's union

The Baltimore Sun

A third-generation dockworker from Baltimore was elected president of the International Longshoremen's Association yesterday - the largest union of port workers in North America.

Richard P. Hughes Jr., who had been executive vice president of the New York-based union since 2005, replaces John Bowers, who held the post for two decades.

The 73-year-old Hughes - the first Longshoreman from Baltimore to hold the top post - was selected in a voice vote at the ILA's quadrennial convention in Florida. He was unopposed.

Hughes, was not available for comment after his installation yesterday, but local officials welcomed the news.

"This is a good move for the union, and for Baltimore," Kermit Bowling, president of the Baltimore's ILA Local 333, said from the convention. "He's a tough negotiator, but he's fair. Even if he disagrees with you, he listens."

The ILA was organized in 1892 in the Great Lakes region. Now it represents more than 65,000 members on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, along major U.S. rivers, in Puerto Rico and Eastern Canada.

The ILA negotiates master contracts governing the wages that shipping lines pay workers who load and unload cargo. It also lobbies Congress on labor issues and provides benefits to its members.

In Baltimore, Local 333 recently ended a fractious 18 months under the international union's control. ILA officials in New York took over the Baltimore unit after accusing the former ILA local leader of financial mismanagement and rule-breaking.

The local's ranks had already been depleted to about 1,000 - from about 3,000 in the 1970s - because of automation, a move to non-union labor and competition from other ports.

Bowling, who was elected at the end of the local's trusteeship in December, said his members would look to Hughes to help retain jobs.

Hughes will face other challenges. He takes the helm amid a Justice Department investigation into allegations that several ILA officials have ties to organized crime.

Bowers and 35 others, as well as several union-related benefit funds, were named in a racketeering case filed in U.S. District Court in New York in 2005. They deny wrongdoing.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office declined comment on the pending civil complaint, which seeks to place the union and its funds in a federal trusteeship and to bar organized crime figures from the labor organization.

Hughes has never been linked personally to any mob-related case.

The new president started on the Baltimore docks in 1954, following the footsteps of his grandfather, father and uncle, according to a biography supplied by the union. He still lives in South Baltimore, and four of his five children are ILA members.

Hughes, who held various titles in the ILA local, began his ascent in the parent union in 1985, when he was elected vice president of the Atlantic Coast executive board, representing the port of Baltimore.

Helen Delich Bentley, the former Congresswoman and chair of the U.S. Maritime Commission for whom the port of Baltimore is named, praised both Bowers and Hughes.

"John Bowers has been a calming influence on the ILA for some 20 years and is leaving behind big shoes for Richie to fill," she said. "Richie certainly has the ability to do so, and certainly has the interest to do so."

Bentley and , the Local 333 president, said they hope Baltimore will now be candidate for a new ILA headquarters if the union decides to move, although Washington was considered a more likely destination.

At least, they said, local union officials would get Hughes' attention when they need it.

"Baltimore will get extra benefit from this," said Bentley.

meredith.cohn@baltsun.com

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