The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) and National Industrial Transportation League are both expressing concern to the Federal Maritime Commission about plans by around 20 liner companies to alter their chassis pool agreement on file with the commission, questioning whether it will improperly extend antitrust immunity to companies not regulated by the Shipping Act of1984. Some of their concerns echo those raised by the Institute of International Container Lessors in a letter sent in October.
   Plans by carriers through the Ocean Carrier Equipment Management Association (OCEMA) to amend the Consolidated Chassis Management (CCM) Pool Agreement were discussed in closed session by members of the FMC on Thursday, but there was no immediate action by the commission.
   In a letter sent last week to the commission, ILA President Harold Daggett asked the FMC to reject the filing of the CCM pool for antitrust exemption under the Shipping Act of 1984.
   He said the ILA has a collective bargaining agreement with OCEMA for the maintenance and service within interchange pools operated by CCM, but said changes to the pooling agreement "is a clear departure from OCEMA's current business of operating equipment interchange pools for the exclusive benefit of its member companies and a move toward a commercial, for-profit lessor of intermodal equipment."
   The agreement "would permit CCM to directly affect the supply and cost of intermodal equipment available for lease and the consequent competitive climate that currently exists, it would also indirectly affect work opportunity for ILA members who perform this maintenance and service work," he said.
   Bruce J. Carlton, the president and chief executive officer of the NIT League, said his group "is concerned about the expansion of antitrust immunity for chassis pool operations and other activities involving inland transportation providers and other parties beyond the reach of the Shipping Act of 1984, as amended."
   "Although the League is not opposed to the general purpose of the original agreement, which was to allow ocean carriers to establish and operate chassis pools to increase efficiencies in the movement of chassis and intermodal containers in the United States, it is very concerned with the proposed new authority that would permit shippers and other "non-regulated" entities engaged in the transport, use, lease, or ownership of intermodal chassis to participate in the chassis pools under an umbrella of antitrust immunity."
   The league said  those non-regulated entities are defined under the amended CCM agreement to mean "domestic water carriers, inland motor and rail carriers, logistics companies, intermodal marketing companies," and other entities not subject to the regulatory jurisdiction of the FMC.
   Authority granted under the proposed agreement is "extremely broad" and the NIT League said "it is not entirely clear whether there are any limitations on the activities that may occur between the agreement parties and such non-regulated entities. The expansion of the agreement well beyond the pooling of equipment between and among ocean common carriers raises serious doubt as to whether the inclusion of domestic land-based and water carriers, among others, falls within the scope of agreements authorized by the Shipping Act and entitled to antitrust immunity."
   Carlton's letter says "the scope, intentions and authorities provided under the proposed CCM Agreement are riddled with ambiguity, including whether the extension of the chassis pools to land-based operations would be immune from the antitrust laws. The League strongly opposes any expansion of antitrust immunity in a manner that is inconsistent with the Shipping Act, as well as the collective operation of chassis pools that would have anticompetitive impacts on the supply, handling, cost or use of intermodal chassis and/or containers."
  He also said "it is curious to the league why the ocean carrier members of the CCM agreement, many of whom have expressed a desire to exit the chassis business, have now sought to expand their authority to establish, operate and manage chassis pools to an even greater extent, in concert with domestic land and water carriers, and under expanded antitrust immunity."
   The league asks the FMC to "carefully evaluate the likely impact of the proposed amendments on the chassis market, and to take all appropriate steps to seek modifications to the proposal, as necessary, to avoid harmful anticompetitive effects."
   The letters from the ILA and NIT League follow one sent Oct. 3 by the IICL, which includes the chassis leasing companies Flexi-Van Leasing and Trac Intermodal. I    ICL said it opposed changes to the CCM agreement "to the extent that it seeks to extend antitrust immunity under the Shipping Act."
   It said proposed revisions to the CCM agreement represent "a significant and critical expansion" of the 2006 agreement among OCEMA's 20 member lines.
   IICL said the changes would men "activiites that to now have been internal to the carriers will thus be projected into the marketplace under the purported cloak of an antitruse immunity that was intended to apply only to the carrier's own operations." - Chris Dupin