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 The latest halt in loading and unloading of container ships at the
29 ports came as contract talks between union negotiators and
management's bargaining agent, the Pacific Maritime Association,
appeared to reach a critical juncture.
The federal mediator who has sought for weeks to broker a deal
called on Friday for a 48-hour news blackout after meeting with both
parties together, and then separately, union and management
representatives told Reuters.
The two sides said they would abide by the mediator's request. The
development followed a bargaining session on Thursday, the parties'
first face-to-face meeting in nearly a week, that failed to produce
an accord.
The PMA has said the talks, which have dragged on for nine months,
hit a new snag over a demand by the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union for changes in the system of binding arbitration of
contract disputes.
The 20,000 dockworkers represented by the union have been without a
contract since July.
In the meantime, inbound cargo vessels continued to stack up at
anchor, with 27 freighters left idle on Friday morning waiting for a
berth outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's
two busiest cargo hubs.
The numbers are likely to grow by the end of the weekend as
additional vessels arrive from Asia with no place to park at the
docks.
The West Coast ports were not left entirely dormant. The companies
said work will continue in the dockyards, rail yards and terminal
gates as they seek to clear some of the cargo containers already
stacked up on the waterfronts.
EXPORT-IMPORT CRUNCH
The affected ports handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and
more than 70 percent of imports from Asia. Disruptions at those
harbors have rippled through the U.S. commercial supply chain,
slowing deliveries of a wide range of goods, from agricultural
produce to housewares and apparel.
Farmers have been especially hard hit, 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 day.
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The shippers first suspended vessel operations at the ports for two
days last weekend, and suspended operations again on Thursday, a
union holiday. Port operations resumed in full for one eight-hour
shift on Friday before the loading and unloading container ships was
halted again.
Citing months of chronic congestion in freight traffic, the shipping
companies said they were unwilling to pay union workers higher
holiday and weekend wages while productivity declines and cargo
backups reach the point of near gridlock.
The companies accuse the union of orchestrating work slowdowns since
October to gain leverage in negotiations, while the union has
faulted changes in shipping practices instituted by the carriers
themselves for causing worsening backlogs.
Union officials also say the shippers are engaging in brinkmanship,
using the partial shutdown to exaggerate the magnitude of the crisis
as a pressure tactic.
The last time longshore contract talks led to a full shutdown of the
West Coast ports was in 2002, when the companies imposed a lockout
that was lifted 10 days later under a court order sought by
President George W. Bush, invoking the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.
The shipping industry has estimated the 2002 lockout caused $15.6
billion in economic losses. When it ended, some 200 freighters were
waiting at anchor up and down the coast.
The retail and manufacturing industries have projected that a full,
extended shutdown of the ports now could cost the U.S. economy some
$2 billion a day.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Chris Reese and Ken Wills)
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