After a late-night meeting with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the opposing sides in the crippling strike at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach agreed today to meet with a federal mediator in hopes of resolving the labor dispute.

Villaraigosa, who took part in overnight negotiations between representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63’s Office Clerical Unit and the Harbor Employers Association, said he spoke by phone with Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director George Cohen and asked him to send a mediator today. Villaraigosa arrived at Banning’s Landing in Wilmington, the site of negotiations, around 11PM Monday, but was was unable to broker an end to the strike after a full night in the negotiating room. The mediator is an effort by the L.A. mayor to move talks forward and end the strike which in the last eight days has created a bottleneck at the few still-open terminals and forced the rerouting of many more cargo ships to unaffected ports.

“We have met all night. We have worked across the table with a number of proposals. It is still clear to me we’re some bit apart, although progress has been made,” Villaraigosa said during a morning news conference. “Obviously the goal is to get back [to work] if we could, and I’m certainly hopeful that can happen…but they need a third-party intervention, and that’s what they have agreed to.”

Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster has heard that the two sides may try to reach an agreement before the federal mediator arrives from Washington D.C., but that the current situation is still unclear.

The strike has crippled operations at the nation’s biggest port complex and drawn the attention of President Barack Obama, who said on Monday he is closely monitoring the situation.