Tuesday, February 24, 2015

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West Coast ports and dockworkers start clearing backlog



After the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Association made a tentative deal Friday on a new 5-year contract for West Coast port dockworkers, ports and dockworkers started tackling the cargo backlog with a vengeance.

"They’ve turned the firehose on," said Jon Slangerup, chief executive officer of the Port of Long Beach, in a telephone interview with Bloomberg. He said the PMA and the ILWU are "committed to digging out of this as quickly as possible."

At the local ILWU hall in Wilmington, Calif., 1,500 jobs were posted for Saturday’s night shift, up from the usual 800 to 1,000, according to the ILWU local’s president, Mondo Porras.

The parties reached a deal on Friday after nearly nine months of negotiations. U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez turned up the heat on the talks last week, reportedly telling both sides if they couldn’t come to an agreement by Friday, he would move the talks to Washington D.C., a venue that would highlight the damage being done to national trade and the U.S. economy.

Under the compromise Perez brokered, a panel will hear workplace grievances, instead of a single arbitrator. The two sides had been stuck on the issue of how arbitration would work after a contract is in place.

The extreme cargo congestion at the West Coast ports, exacerbated by labor conflict slowdowns and shift cuts, was also the result of backups from inefficient loading of the supersized container ships

Photo Credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

and a lack of truck chassis, according to Slangerup.

Ports were bustling with activity over the weekend on the West Coast with one exception — the Port of Oakland. According to the Associated Press, PMA spokesman Steve Getzug said an arbitrator found that Oakland longshoremen from ILWU Local 10 "took part in illegal work stoppages that included taking breaks at the same time, among other actions reducing productivity Sunday." The port reportedly resumed normal operations Sunday night.

"The Pacific Maritime Association will continue to address any future work stoppages by Local 10 through the grievance and arbitration process, and, if necessary, in court," the PMA said in a statement.

It will take six to eight weeks for West Coast ports to recover from the cargo backlog, according to the Port of Oakland and the National Retail Federation.

For more of the Bloomberg story: www.bloomberg.com


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