More Port news here.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money...pute-ilwu-port-maritime-association/23124947/
SAN FRANCISCO — Chinese New Year is next Thursday, but the celery, broccoli and lettuce Chuck Schreiber sent off to Asia weeks ago will never make it in time.
"It's a huge market for us, about 20% of production. But we can't get it there" because of the labor slowdown at West Coast ports, said Schreiber, the international sales director for Tanimura & Antle, a Salinas, Calif., vegetable grower and shipper.
The 14-week labor dispute between operators of the 29 West Coast port terminals and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which has brought a worker slowdown, is stacking up ships and cargo containers from San Diego to Seattle, leaving produce to wilt and frustrating customers worldwide.
Shipping times through some ports have doubled and even tripled, said Chris Christopher, a transportation analyst with IHS Insight in Lexington, Mass.
Broccoli picked and packed for export to Japan. Produce
Broccoli picked and packed for export to Japan. Produce exports have been affected by the January and February slowdown on West coast ports. (Photo: Chuck Shreiber, Saca Trading)
The port of Los Angeles opened haltingly on Monday after the weekend shutdown of the 29 West Coast port terminals by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), representing port operators. By about 9 a.m., the cranes were seen taking containers off some of the ships. By 10, a Greek tanker had arrived. But many ships still were offshore.
Adan Ortega, spokesman for Local 13 of the ILWU, charges that ship and terminal operators have been deliberately slowing down the work in order to make fatter profits. He says they are ordering only a third of the normal workforce to unload ships.
"They are expecting 45 workers to do the work of 120," he said. "They created this situation."
And he says there is no backup at the ports — that operators are creating the "illusion of congestion."
The port operators say the backup is real — and is the result of the worker slowdown.
"Since Nov. 3 at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the union has refused to dispatch skilled workers who operate yard cranes," said Steve Getzug, spokesman for the PMA. Only one-third of the normal crane operators are being sent, he said. Without them, ports can't move containers that have come off ships from the yard to trains and trucks — backing up the entire process.
"It is akin to sending out a football team without its quarterback," said Getzug. "You need the whole team to make it work."
Schreiber's is one of thousands of U.S. businesses dealing with the fallout. He used to harvest on Thursday so produce could be trucked to Oakland or Long Beach for Friday sailings.
"Now you get your stuff there on Tuesday, and then comes Saturday and they send out a note saying your goods aren't going out because the vessel is sitting in the harbor because there aren't enough people to unload it so it can be refilled," he said.
"Our customers are now asking for air shipment, because a lot of the vessels that were planning on being there for Chinese New Year didn't make it," he said. His company will end up paying the extra transportation charges.
The slowdown also is affecting beef and pork producers, said Tyson Foods CEO Donnie Smith. About 25% of U.S. pork is exported, much of it to Asia, he said.
The American Meat Institute estimates $30 million a week in losses to meat and poultry producers from the port dispute.
The contract of the ILWU, which represents dock workers on the West Coast, expired on June 30. Since then, talks between the ILWU and PMA have been ongoing. A sticking point has been over tractor-trailer chassis used to move cargo containers once they get to port.
Until last year, the chassis were owned by the shipping lines and, under union agreements, longshoremen had the job of inspecting them. But now at West Coast ports, as at most ports worldwide, truckers own or lease the chassis and outsource inspection.
The ILWU wants ports to require that union members inspect chassis before truckers can come onto port property, reported the Journal of Commerce shipping trade magazine. The shipping lines say because they no longer own the chassis, they can't make that demand.
Another issue in negotiations has been automation, where U.S. ports lag significantly.
"Most ports around the world have significantly more automation than the U.S. ports do. In the developed world, I'd say that every port is more automated than we are," said Peter Friedmann, director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition.
The union has argued that it should control any new jobs created by machines and has limited the installation of automated cranes and other equipment common elsewhere.
Asked about the Longshoreman's wages, among the best for blue-collar workers, at an annual average $142,000, spokesman Ortega said that pay is what it takes for a middle-class life.
The biggest fear is that the ongoing dispute will lead to a full-fledged union strike or owner lockout that shuts the ports. That happened for 10 days in 2002, resulting in millions of dollars of losses, and ended only when President George W. Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley labor relations law to get the ports running again.
If it gets to that this time, predicts Christopher of IHS, "the White House will step in."
