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 Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker
weighed in as emissaries of President Barack Obama, who has come
under rising political pressure to intervene in a conflict that has
reverberated through the trans-Pacific commercial supply chain and
could, by some estimates, cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars.
Worsening cargo congestion that the union and shippers blame on each
other has slowed freight traffic since October at the ports, which
handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70
percent of the country's imports from Asia.
More recently, the shipping companies have sharply curtailed
operations at the terminals, suspending the loading and unloading of
cargo vessels for night shifts, holidays and weekends at the five
busiest ports.
Work has continued around the clock in the dockyards, rail yards and
terminal gates for most of the ports. Some smaller ports remained
open to nighttime vessel operations as well.
The union and shipping companies each accuse the other side of
instigating the disruptions to gain leverage in contract
negotiations that have dragged on for nine months, appearing to hit
a roadblock in the last two weeks.
ARBITRATION CITED IN SNAGGED TALKS
The bargaining agent for the shippers and terminal operators, the
Pacific Maritime Association, has said talks hit a snag over a union
demand for changes in the system of binding arbitration of contract
disputes.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 20,000
dockworkers, has insisted that an accord was near in the
negotiations, which a federal mediator was assigned to oversee last
month.
Perez joined the San Francisco talks for the first time on Tuesday,
according to his spokeswoman, Xochitl Hinojosa, urging the parties
to "come to an immediate agreement to prevent further damage to our
economy."
He was joined for another round of talks on Wednesday, she said, by
Pritzker and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, whose city encompasses
the nation's busiest cargo port and lies adjacent to the No. 2 cargo
hub at Long Beach.
Sources familiar with the situation said Perez huddled with each
party separately, then briefly together on Tuesday, and met with
both sides again on Wednesday as negotiations and "sidebars"
stretched into the evening.
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Meanwhile, the governors of the three West Coast states -
California, Oregon and Washington - all Democrats, issued a
statement on Wednesday welcoming Perez' involvement and calling for
a quick resolution to the dispute.
Separately, eight congressional Republicans who chair House or
Senate panels with jurisdiction over transportation and labor sent a
letter to Obama on Wednesday urging him to take further unspecified
action if a settlement is not reached by March 2 - two months from
the date the federal mediator was appointed.
A Senate Commerce Committee spokeswoman, Lauren Hammond, said the
letter's reference to "exercising additional leadership to resolve
the situation" could be interpreted to mean invoking the 1947
Taft-Hartley Act.
Under that law, a president can seek a federal court order
compelling the end to a work stoppage in a labor dispute if it poses
a national emergency. But labor law experts have said it would be
difficult to make such a case to a judge under current
circumstances.
The union and the PMA have declined public comment since a federal
mediator called for a news blackout last Friday.
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 under Taft-Hartley.
(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional
reporting by Krista Hughes in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham,
Peter Cooney, Sandra Maler and Ken Wills)
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