After more than nine months of contact talks and a work slowdown that snarled cargo container ports up and down the West Coast, port owners and dock workers finally reached a tentative five-year contract agreement over the weekend.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s leadership has agreed to a five-year contract with the Pacific Maritime Association, union officials announced Friday. The contract still needs to be ratified by the union’s 13,000 rank-and-file members, but that is expected to occur without any further complications.
Labor Secretary Helped Broker the Deal
The deal was reached after a federal mediator failed to get both sides to reach an agreement. Last week, President Barack Obama sent Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez to oversee the talks, which were being held in San Francisco. Perez reportedly told both sides that if they failed to reach a deal by midnight Friday, he would move the talks to Washington, D.C., where they would be more exposed to pressure from elected officials to reach a resolution quickly before further damage to the US economy could occur.
The agreement followed weeks of tension at the 29 West Coast ports from San Diego to Seattle. Owners charged that dockworkers were purposely working slower and withholding the most skilled workers to create a log jam at West Coast cargo container facilities, while the union blamed ownership for the delays because they locked out workers on weekends.
Normal Operations Resumed This Morning
PMA President James McKenna and ILWU President Bob McEllrath issued a joint statement that said the agreement was a victory for both sides.
“After more than nine months of negotiations, we are pleased to have reached an agreement that is good for workers and for the industry,” the statement read. “We are also pleased that our ports can now resume full operations.”
Next: Repair the Damage
Labor Secretary Perez told CNN that the goal now was to fix the log jam caused by the prolonged labor dispute.
“They’re already working but they’ll be back in full force tomorrow,” Perez said. “And I am confident that up and down the West Coast there is an acute awareness of the need to reduce the backlog (of ships needing to be unloaded). And that is job one.”
According to the Port of Oakland’s official website, it could take six to eight weeks for backlog of container ships to be caught up.
“Cargo movement should improve soon, but it will take time to restore full productivity,” the website stated, adding that emergency measures were being taken to expedite cargo movement, including weekend gates, express lanes, additional truck parking and daily status reports for shippers.
US Economy Threatened
The contract between workers and management expired July 1. Talks between the two sides have been ongoing since May 12. In January, the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service stepped in with the hopes of finding a way to untangle the stalled contract negotiations.
West Coast ports handle more than two-thirds of all US retail container cargo and most of the cargo arriving from Asia, so the effects of the slowdown were felt up and down the supply chain and in retail markets.
The last time the ports went dark was in 2002, when strike shut down West Coast ports for 10 days. That created a backlog that took several months to be cleared. That disruption cost the US economy an estimated $15 billion in reported losses.
The ILWU represents 14,000 port workers at 29 ports from San Diego to Seattle.