Six parked cargo vessels were viewable from Bluff Park Monday afternoon as part of the shipping bottleneck created by the clerical workers strike which began last week. Photo by Sarah Bennett.
Cargo ships continue to stall off the coast of Southern California or move on to other ports as the strike that is hobbling the largest shipping complex in the country enters its seventh day. Negotiations continued through Sunday, but so far, an agreement has not been reached.
As of Saturday, nine ships had been diverted away from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, where the 800-member Office Clerical Unit of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 walked off the job last week, shutting down 10 of 14 container terminals, three in the Port of Long Beach alone.
Ports such as Oakland and the Panama Canal have accepted the nine diverted ships, said Marine Exchange Executive Director Dick McKenna, representing more than a third of all container vessels that were to arrive in Southern California during that time period. Another six vessels were expected to arrive in Long Beach and Los Angeles on Sunday, but their status was not immediately available.
Talks between the two bargaining sides—the ILWU, representing the small clerical workers unit and the Harbor Employers Association, representing 14 shipping companies—included a late-night Friday session and another marathon session Saturday after which a contract proposal was submitted for union response, though no breakthroughs were reported. At issue, union officials say, is protecting employment for local dockworkers. Employers say that the union is trying to force it to hire unneeded staff.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa over the weekend called for round-the-clock bargaining—through a mediator—to end the strike. In spite of talks between the two adversaries, there have been periods without hard negotiations, according to the mayor.
“This cannot continue,” Villaraigosa said in a message to John Fageaux, president of the union’s clerical unit, and Stephen Berry, chief negotiator for the employers group, saying that the strike is “costing our local economy billions of dollars. The cost is too great to continue down this failed path.”
Other affected sectors of the economy are also taking action. The Harbor Trucking Association, which represents nearly 8000 truck drivers who pick up loads at the two ports, sent a letter Friday to Federal Maritime Commissioner Mario Cordero, asking for help in securing a quick resolution, emphasizing the chain of losses that are being experienced by the terminal closures.
“In short, this closure continues to have a devastating impact on all facets of the maritime industry,” it said.
Some experts estimate the economic loss to be $1 billion a day, however, that is assuming that the cargo being delayed or diverted will never be delivered and a true estimate might take weeks to come by. On Saturday, there were nine container vessels waiting to be unloaded in Los Angeles and Long Beach, where no cargo is moving through most of the facilities.
The Los Angeles and Long Beach port complex is the nation’s busiest, handling about 56 percent of all imported cargo in terms of its value.