LOS ANGELES, Feb 17 (Reuters) – U.S. West Coast ports that were closed to incoming cargo vessels during the holiday weekend reopened in full on Tuesday as Labor Secretary Tom Perez arrived in San Francisco seeking to broker a settlement ending months of shipping disruptions.Perez was sent to meet with the two sides in the conflict at the behest of President Barack Obama, who has come under mounting pressure to weigh in on a labor dispute that has cascaded through the U.S. commercial supply chain and beyond.
“Secretary Perez has meetings with both parties today in San Francisco,” spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said in an email. “He’ll urge the parties to resolve their dispute quickly at the bargaining table. We don’t have any updates at this time.”
It was not immediately clear whether Perez would meet with the two sides together, separately or both. But one source familiar with the situation said Perez would likely huddle in a room with the principal negotiators from both sides, along with the federal mediator who joined the talks last month.
Representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 20,000 dockworkers, and the bargaining agent for shipping companies and terminal operations, the Pacific Maritime Association, have declined public comment since agreeing last Friday to honor a news blackout requested by the mediator. No face-to-face talks between the parties are believed to have occurred in the three days since then.
The PMA previously said the talks, which have dragged on for nine months, hit a new snag on a union demand for changes in the system of binding arbitration of contract disputes. The union has insisted the two sides are near an accord.
Operations to load and unload cargo vessels at all 29 West Coast ports were halted through the holiday weekend as of Friday night but resumed Tuesday morning, port authorities said. More than 30 freighters idled through the weekend waiting for berths to open outside the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s two busiest cargo hubs.
It was the longest such suspension in the months-long labor dispute. Vessel operations were likewise suspended for two days last weekend, and again last Thursday, which was a union holiday.
But shippers said work at the ports continued in the dockyards, rail yards and terminal gates to move cargo already unloaded from ships.
DOMINO EFFECT
The affected ports handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 percent of imports from Asia. A domino effect has rippled through much of the U.S. economy, extending to agriculture, manufacturing, retail and transportation.
California farmers have been hit especially hard, with port disruptions posing a major barrier to perishable goods headed to overseas markets and export losses estimated to be running at hundreds of millions of dollars a week.
Asian exporters faced rising shipping rates and some have been forced to reroute their goods by more costly air freight. One automaker, Japan’s Honda Motor Co, said on Sunday it would slow production for a week at plants in Ohio, Indiana and the Canadian province of Ontario, because of port-related delays in parts shipments to those factories.
The shippers have said they were curtailing port operations because they were no longer willing to pay union workers premium overnight, holiday and weekend wages during work slowdowns the companies have accused the union of orchestrating.
The union has blamed changes in shipping practices instituted by the carriers themselves for causing worsening backlogs, including super-sized freighters that have inundated the ports with high volumes of cargo all at once, and say that suspending vessel operations has only made matters worse.
Port officials say it will take many weeks to clear the immediate backlog of cargo containers piled up on the docks once the dispute is settled. A long-term concern is that U.S. export business lost to other countries and other ports may not return.
Retail and manufacturing executives say a full, extended port shutdown could cost the U.S. economy some $2 billion a day. (Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Rancho, Mirage, California; Editing by Bill Trott)
Looks like they’re all back to work for now. I just thought of this but someone should get the Longshoremen to refuse to offload from foreign flag ships. It would be a modern day tea-party, I don’t mean the guys with the three corner hats who listen to Alex Jones. All of our money is going to China and the only ones who end up looking bad are the ILWU and the Terminals.
the plan always was to bring the longshoremen back today. The PMA has just been trying to leverage the ILWU to move at the bargaining table by taking away the lucrative weekend/holiday work. The thing is the terminal operators just don’t have that much to make the longshoremen hurt very badly and I believe in the end that the union will win this fight even though I believe a container crane operator should not get $400k a year (many do you know)!
Yea, I agree with you it’s BS that some of them make that much. I always thought it was BS, back when I was taking classes when we learned about terminal operations, an entry level job a non-license student who doesn’t ship out might get could be an Asst. Terminal Operations Manager, making a lovely 40-60k meanwhile all the people you’re supervising make vastly more than you do. It’s like hell why didn’t I just try to get into the union instead of going to college.
Fraq, as for Alex Jones, maybe I’m the naive one but I’ve never been much of a fan of Truthers
It really was not a strike but a “lock-out” by management of the Pacific Maritime Association, just like in 2004. The ILWU seem to be the inheritors of the IWW or Wobblies mantle in American labor appropriating the motto of the IWW: “An injury to one is an injury to all”. For all the working mariners on this forum this should translate to “A victory for one is a victory for all”. Their getting more sets the stage for any of us getting more. They are fighting the fight for all of us and have the considerable advantage that their jobs are much more difficult to farm out to foreign entities.
As for the alleged annual wages of some of the crane operators and other ILWU members the figures being floated on this forum and by management sound hard to believe as I understand the hourly wage to be in the range of $40 to $60 per hour. A very good wage but even with weekend and holiday work it would be hard to make $400K. As for the terminal mangers I never saw one of them get my ship out early, it is the crane drivers and the longshoreman who make the boxes move. And good luck finding what the executives of the PMA make in annual compensation. Jobs like the ILWU have are what America needs not part time Wal-Mart work.
[QUOTE=Seago;154806]It really was not a strike but a “lock-out” by management of the Pacific Maritime Association, just like in 2004. The ILWU seem to be the inheritors of the IWW or Wobblies mantle in American labor appropriating the motto of the IWW: “An injury to one is an injury to all”. For all the working mariners on this forum this should translate to “A victory for one is a victory for all”. Their getting more sets the stage for any of us getting more. They are fighting the fight for all of us and have the considerable advantage that their jobs are much more difficult to farm out to foreign entities.
As for the alleged annual wages of some of the crane operators and other ILWU members the figures being floated on this forum and by management sound hard to believe as I understand the hourly wage to be in the range of $40 to $60 per hour. A very good wage but even with weekend and holiday work it would be hard to make $400K. As for the terminal mangers I never saw one of them get my ship out early, it is the crane drivers and the longshoreman who make the boxes move. And good luck finding what the executives of the PMA make in annual compensation. Jobs like the ILWU have are what America needs not part time Wal-Mart work.
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That is utter BS. Just look at the ILWU’s maritime union, the IBU. The ILWU seems to think its ok for their IBU mariners to make half what the dock workers (who can go home every night) are making.
The longshoremen are driving away domestic marine transportation business to trucks and rail. They are costing mariners jobs and driving our wages lower.
The strike has ended however the backlog of ships at the Port of L.A. is still really large. I took the video below on the 21st of February, the day the strike ‘ended’. I don’t know how long it will take for the ships to be processed but it will definitely be weeks if not months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DhRGkw_33A
[QUOTE=I sail tallships;155242]The strike has ended however the backlog of ships at the Port of L.A. is still really large. I took the video below on the 21st of February, the day the strike ‘ended’. I don’t know how long it will take for the ships to be processed but it will definitely be weeks if not months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DhRGkw_33A[/QUOTE]
You know who are some of the few who have been prospering from this are the companies running launches. Was that 2003 last time this happened? I was running launches then and remember lots of OT…ships anchored up well south of Huntington Beach.
