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 Labor Secretary Tom Perez joined the talks in San Francisco on
Tuesday at the behest of President Barack Obama, who has come under
growing political pressure to intervene in a dispute that has
rippled through the trans-Pacific commercial supply chain and could
cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 20,000
dockworkers, has been locked in negotiations for nine months with
the bargaining agent for shippers and terminal operators, the
Pacific Maritime Association (PMA).
Tensions arising from the talks have played out in worsening cargo
congestion that has severely slowed freight traffic at ports that
handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70
percent of imports from Asia.
More recently, the shipping companies have curtailed operations
sharply at the marine terminals, suspending the loading and
unloading of cargo vessels for night shifts, holidays and weekends
at the five busiest ports.
The disruptions have reverberated throughout the U.S. economy,
extending to agriculture, manufacturing, retail and transportation.
Cargo loads that would normally take a few days to clear the ports
have been facing lag times of up to two weeks or more as dozens of
inbound freighters stack up along the coast, waiting for berths to
open.
A longer-term concern has been that U.S. export business lost to
other countries and ports may not return once the West Coast
dockworker crisis ends.
STEPPING UP THE PRESSURE
Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, whose San Francisco Bay port is one
of several bearing the brunt of the disruptions, said that Perez
told her and other mayors on a conference call on Thursday that he
was trying harder to squeeze a deal from the two parties.
"What he shared with us is that if, within 24 hours, the two sides
were not in agreement he was going to force the two sides to come to
Washington to negotiate, she said. He is very committed to
continuing to apply pressure and apply the full force of the federal
government.
It was not clear under what authority the government could compel a
change of venue in labor negotiations.
Other sources familiar with the situation told Reuters that Perez
had spoken, apparently figuratively, of how a failure to reach an
agreement in San Francisco might require attempts to move the talks
to the nation's capital.
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"He did make some mention of that fact that if they couldn't get a
resolution here (in San Francisco), how they might be invited to
D.C. to try to resolve their differences," said one source who asked
to remain anonymous. Another paraphrased Perez as saying: "We need
to get it done here. Nobody wants to have to go back to Washington
to get it done."
Schaaf said that U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker joined Perez
for a second day at the negotiations on Thursday, along with Los
Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Talks adjourned for the day at about 9:30 p.m. local time, and more
sessions were planned for Friday, one source said.
Sources said that the chief remaining sticking point in the talks is
a union demand for changes in the system of submitting workplace
disputes under the contract to binding arbitration.
The PMA has said the union wants the right to remove unilaterally
any of the four West Coast arbitrators at the end of each contract
period, a move the companies fear could leave arbitrators vulnerable
to intimidation.
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 through a court order sought by President
George W. Bush under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.
(Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco and Steve
Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Eric Beech and David Goodman)
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