Labor disputes put West Coast seaports at a standstill

Ports up and down the U.S. West Coast are nearly at a standstill after months of bickering between unions and the companies that operate marine terminals.

Imagine Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle, and 26 other ports with the sound of sea breezes instead of containers being loaded and unloaded. Many companies are not calling workers to unload ships, so imports like car parts, clothing, furniture, and electronics—anything made in Asia for U.S. consumers—are stuck in port or at sea.

U.S. exports such as meat and perishables are on hold too. Containers that would normally take two or three days to move from dock to inland destinations via trailer have seen delays of up to a week or more, disrupting sales nationwide.

More than 20,000 dock workers have been without renewed contracts since last summer, and partial port shutdowns came as the result of a dispute with their shipping line employers that has worsened since November. Businesses are the monkey-in-the-middle as the dockworkers and employers battle. Both sides accuse the other of using tactics that cause bottlenecks at many ports and hold up cargo in a bid to leverage their side of the negotiations.

The parties hammered out a healthcare agreement, though tentative, in August. But they remain at an impasse over issues of wages, labor rules, and whether union members or others do specific jobs. The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which includes employers who operate shipping companies and port terminals, lays the blame on longshoremen.

Pay is the hottest issue in the negotiations. The PMA said an average full-time longshoreman makes $147,000 annually—a figure the union staunchly disputes. Spokesman Craig Merrilees said wages range from $26-$36 an hour, though many longshoremen are not full-time employees.

The association claims longshoremen have staged deliberate work slowdowns since November. Dockworkers deny this, saying cargo is moving slowly for reasons beyond their control, including a shortage of truck beds to relay containers onward to retailers’ distribution warehouses.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union said companies are simply exaggerating the extent of congestion as a means of cutting dockworker shifts and pressuring negotiators into a new contract agreement. The Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, the transit point for 40 percent of the nation’s imports, was already suffering its worst congestion in a decade before the labor dispute began.

Fifteen ships are scheduled to arrive today at the gargantuan ports complex of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Instead of docking, they will have to anchor alongside about 20 others off the coast, until berths clear at the docks. As negotiations drag on, flotillas of cargo ships also await at anchor near the ports of Oakland, Calif., and Seattle and Tacoma, Wash.

Some importers have been forced to divert shipments to East Coast ports or to use hyper-expensive air cargo in order to satisfy sales demands and keep their businesses afloat.

But despite a massive pile-up of containers needing to be processed, this week saw a new twist in the story: Companies that run marine terminals locked out the majority of dockworkers Thursday, keeping crews from operating the cargo cranes for loading and unloading ships. The partial lockout is also planned for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Each is either a holiday or weekend and employers don’t want to have to pay dockworkers extra amid the contract dispute, especially when they believe longshoremen have slowed their work rate as a pressure tactic, said spokesman Steve Getzug.

Employers could hire smaller crews in the meantime, to focus on moving containers out of clogged dockyards to trucks or trains. And full crews will still service military and cruise ships, and any cargo ships bound for Hawaii.

Mediators were helpful during East Coast port labor disputes in 2013. This week, the union finally agreed to mediation in the West Coast dispute, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service assigned an arbiter to work with the two sides.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.