Cargo Business Newswire

Monday, November 10, 2014

Top Story

ILWU and PMA tussle about slowdowns at Seattle and Tacoma ports as congestion continues to plague West Coast ports

Port workers are being sent home, agriculture shipments are threatened, and truck drivers are at a standstill due to congestion caused by alleged work slowdowns by labor at the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma, which the union vehemently denies.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Pacific Maritime Association, which represents terminal employers, have been in contract talks since May to replace a six-year agreement that expired on July 1.

According to Wade Gates, a spokesman for the PMA, Seattle and Tacoma ILWU locals have slowed container movement at the ports from 25 to 30 containers per hour to 10 to 18 per hour.

Gates accused the ILWU of "reneging on an agreement" to keep normal operations going while contract negotiations continue.

"This is a bold-face lie," the ILWU responded in its own statement, noting that the two sides have disagreed for decades on what "normal operations" look like, so agreeing to maintain them would be difficult.

"Congestion at key ports is the result of three factors – some of which is from employer mismanagement, according to industry experts," said ILWU spokesperson Craig Merrilees, who pointed out challenges that include a shortage of truck drivers, truck chassis, and rail car capacity to haul cargo away from the docks.

In response to the alleged labor action, terminal operators have started sending union workers home early, further adding to the slowdown at the terminals.

"We are experiencing congestion at the terminal gates, terminals are filling up with containers and ships are being delayed from leaving," said Port of Tacoma spokeswoman Tara Mattina. "We know these delays affect every part of the supply chain — especially truck drivers, cargo owners and Eastern Washington farmers trying to get their products to market."

The slowdown also threatens to worsen congestion at the Southern California ports.

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are also struggling with cargo backlogs and delays for at least the first two reasons, but no port official would say the labor force is slowing down. The supply of chassis, which used to be managed by shipping lines, has recently been taken over by private leasing companies. The transition has been "bumpy," according to a spokesman for the Port of Los Angeles.

Ryan Nesbitt, who runs the international logistics of an apple-shipping company in Yakima, said he has 100 containers of apples sitting at the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma that should have been shipped by now.

He is most worried about the truckers who haul his produce to the ports. Each container is refrigerated and once the container is loaded on a truck, the driver is responsible for those apples — meaning when they are sitting at the ports for days waiting to be loaded, they have to pay to keep the generators running and apples refrigerated.

"The truckers are footing the bill for that," Nesbitt said. "Those are not the guys who should be the ones suffering from this."

The congestion comes at the tail end of peak shipping season, when retailers are moving goods into place for holiday shopping.

Nick Vyas, director of the Center for Global Supply Chain Management at USC said most holiday goods have already moved through the ports, but if a store finds it needs to order more of a product to meet demand, it could face problems.

For more of the Seattle Times story: seattletimes.com

For more of the KPCC story: www.scpr.org