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 The settlement, confirmed in a joint statement by the two sides, was
reached three days after U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez arrived
in San Francisco on Tuesday to broker a deal with the help of a
federal mediator who had joined in the talks six weeks earlier.
The White House called the deal "a huge relief" for the economy,
businesses and workers.
President Barack Obama urged the parties "to work together to clear
out the backlogs and congestion in the West Coast ports as they
finalize their agreement," the White House said in a statement.
The 20,000 dockworkers covered by the tentative five-year labor
accord have been without a contract since July.
Tensions arising from the talks have played out since last fall in
chronic cargo backups that have increasingly slowed freight traffic
at the ports, which handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade
and more than 70 percent of the nation's imports from Asia.
More recently, the shipping companies have sharply curtailed
operations at the marine terminals, suspending loading and unloading
of cargo vessels for night shifts, holidays and weekends at the five
busiest ports.
Perez said that as part of Friday's accord, the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union and the shippers' bargaining agent,
the Pacific Maritime Association, agreed to fully restore all port
operations starting Saturday evening.
Perez was sent to California on Tuesday as an emissary for Obama,
who had come under mounting political pressure to intervene in a
conflict that by some estimates could have ended up costing the U.S.
economy billions of dollars.
ALMOST SUMMONED TO WASHINGTON?
Perez said he told the union and management negotiators: "You have
an obligation to resolve this matter quickly because too many people
and businesses are suffering."
In a conference call with reporters following the agreement, Perez
said he also had put leaders from both sides on notice that unless
they came to terms swiftly they would be "summoned to Washington to
continue their negotiations at the White House."
The principal sticking point when he first joined the talks, Perez
said, was the arbitration system for resolving workplace disputes
under the contract. He did not disclose how that impasse was
overcome but said the parties agreed to changes that would improve
the system while "ensuring fairness to both sides.
Perez, who had been joined at times this week by U.S. Commerce
Secretary Penny Pritzker and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, exited
the talks Friday morning after meeting one last time with both
sides.
Announcement of an agreement came hours later. The deal is subject
to ratification by the union rank-and-file and the individual
shipping lines and terminal operators that make up the PMA. No
details of the terms were immediately revealed.
Disruptions at the ports, blamed by each side on the other as
pressure tactics, have reverberated throughout the U.S. economy,
extending to agriculture, manufacturing, retail and transportation.
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Cargo loads that would normally take a few days to clear the ports
have faced lag times of two weeks or more as dozens of inbound
freighters stacked up at anchor along the coast, waiting for berths
to open.
RIPPLE EFFECTS
California farmers were 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.
One automaker, Japan's Honda Motor Co, said on Sunday it would slow
production for a week at three North American plants due to delays
in parts shipments from Asia. Other car manufacturers said they were
switching to higher-cost air freight to minimize delivery slowdowns.
A longer-term concern has been that U.S. export business lost to
other countries and ports may not return once the West Coast dock
worker crisis ends.
Port officials have said it would take six to eight weeks to clear
the immediate backlog of cargo containers piled up on the docks and
several months for freight traffic to return to a normal rhythm once
the dispute was settled.
Besides work slowdowns the companies accused the union of staging to
gain bargaining leverage, and the curtailed operations the union
said were designed to squeeze its members, the West Coast waterfront
still faces a range of systemic problems cited by port authorities
as factors in the backups.
One of those is the recent advent of super-sized freighters that
have been inundating the ports with higher volumes of cargo all at
once, as well as railway delays and a shortage of truckers serving
some of the harbors.
Still, the settlement averted a worst-case scenario of the labor
dispute devolving into a full-scale, extended shutdown of the ports,
which the retail and manufacturing industries have projected could
cost the U.S. economy some $2 billion a day.
The last time contract talks led to a complete closure 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.
(Additional reporting by Ann Saphir and Sarah McBride in San
Francisco and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by James
Dalgleish, Lisa Shumaker and Ken Wills)
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