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 President Barack Obama, under pressure to weigh in on a labor
dispute that has rippled through the U.S. commercial supply chain
and beyond, said on Saturday he would dispatch Labor Secretary Tom
Perez to meet with the two sides in the conflict.
But there was no word on timing of the trip until Monday, when a
spokeswoman for the labor secretary said Perez was due to arrive in
San Francisco on Tuesday to join in talks between the shipping
companies and the union representing 20,000 dockworkers.
Neither the International Longshore and Warehouse Union nor the
shipping companies' bargaining agent, the Pacific Maritime
Association, have spoken about the negotiations since agreeing on
Friday to honor a news blackout requested by a federal mediator. And
no face-to-face talks between the parties are believed to have
occurred since then.
The PMA previously said the talks, which have dragged on for nine
months, hit a new snag over 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.
 "We hope Secretary Perez can really get the parties to work out
whatever their final issues are and get a deal," said National
Retail Federation executive Jonathan Gold on Fox Business News.
Inbound cargo vessels continued to stack up at anchor, with 34
freighters idled on Monday morning waiting for a berth outside the
adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's two
busiest cargo hubs.
Loading and unloading of cargo vessels at all 29 West Coast ports
has been halted since Friday night and was not set to resume until
Tuesday morning. Vessel operations were likewise suspended last
weekend, and again on Thursday.
But shippers said work at the ports continued in the dockyards, rail
yards and terminal gates as they seek to reduce the backlog of cargo
sitting on the waterfronts.
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 been
felt across much of the U.S. economy, extending to agriculture,
manufacturing, retail and transportation.
California 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 week.
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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 <7267.T>, 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 and say that
suspending vessel operations has only made matters worse.
The last time 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.
The shipping industry has estimated the 2002 lockout caused $15.6
billion in economic losses. 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 and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional
reporting by Jeff Mason in Rancho, Mirage, California; Editing by
Peter Cooney and Eric Walsh)
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