Enmity Escalates in Port Talks
Hopes of a quick end to the labor conflict that has closed West Coast ports dimmed Tuesday when a union president stormed out of a meeting with a federal mediator, angered that port employers were accompanied by armed bodyguards.
Wall Street analysts watched the ongoing dispute with concern and warned that a prolonged lockout could further damage a fragile U.S. economy. Meanwhile, container vessels loaded with shoes, bananas, auto parts and other imports continued to stack up outside harbors from San Diego to Seattle, which have been shut down since Sunday. Losses have been estimated at $1 billion a day.
Asked about the lockout Tuesday morning, President Bush said, “We’re worried about it. We’re closely monitoring it.” He declined to comment on the possibility of invoking the Taft-Hartley Act, which gives him the power to call for an 80-day cooling-off period.
Retail groups stepped up their lobbying for federal intervention. “We cannot overstate the gravity of the current situation,” said Tracy Mullin, president of the National Retail Federation, in a letter to Bush.
The AFL-CIO has also heightened its involvement, monitoring the fast-changing situation with almost hourly phone calls to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and pressing the administration to stay out of the talks.
Union officials said Tuesday afternoon that they would discuss reopening talks, perhaps at another location and with limits on the number of participants, but said they would no longer deal with Joseph Miniace, chief negotiator for the shipping lines. The shipping lines rejected that condition. Both sides, however, said they were eager to negotiate a contract and get the docks moving again.
Frustration and distrust have been running high on both sides, and tensions boiled over at the meeting in Oakland on Tuesday morning.
Peter Hurtgen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, had traveled to California hoping to persuade the union to accept federal mediation. The union has a tradition of not allowing outside parties into negotiations, but agreed to discuss the process with Hurtgen.
Union President James Spinosa and four members of the union’s negotiating team sat in one fifth-floor conference room while Miniace and the Pacific Maritime Assn. negotiating team of about 15 sat in another. Hurtgen shuttled between them.
In the hall stood two armed off-duty police officers who arrived with Miniace, who said they have been his bodyguards since he received death threats 10 days ago.
Less than an hour into the talks, Spinosa learned that the guards were armed and quickly left the building along with his entire team.
“We’re not going to tolerate this,” Spinosa shouted to reporters.
Hurtgen pursued them to the building entrance asking that they reconsider, but the union team pulled away in a minivan.
“We felt it was life-threatening,” Spinosa said later at a news conference at the union’s San Francisco headquarters. “It’s outrageous to this membership....We feel this set of negotiations has taken a turn for the worse.”
The shipping lines defended the use of bodyguards, citing the death threats.
National union leaders condemned the employers group. Bringing armed guards was “unprecedented and outrageous, calculated to intimidate if not scuttle the agreement,” the AFL-CIO’s Ron Blackwell said.
Hurtgen later issued a statement saying the presence of security guards was “inappropriate and a breach of bargaining protocol.”
“While today’s development was unfortunate, I am pleased that the parties agreed to meet, and that they came together this morning. I remain hopeful that these negotiations can move forward, and I continue to offer my assistance,” Hurtgen said.
On the substance of the talks, Spinosa said he was keeping the core issue of technology off the table until the association revamped its proposal. Instead, Tuesday’s discussion covered union proposals for its members’ pensions.
Overall, “we are very, very far apart,” Spinosa said. He also rejected the shipping lines’ request that the union sign an extension of its former contract--a condition of reopening the ports. The union agreed to daily extensions from July 1, when the three-year pact was due to expire, until Sept. 2.
The Pacific Maritime Assn. locked out workers Sunday night after a series of alleged union slowdowns that the employers said cut production by more than half. Terminal operators said it was less expensive to shut the ports than to operate them under a slowdown.
At the sprawling ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, dockworkers maintained picket lines at terminal gates, holding aloft signs calling for unity and a fair contract.
Like everywhere else in the harbor, the long arms of Seaside Transportation’s cranes were idle and cocked skyward. The roadway outside, normally jammed with trucks waiting to pick up cargo, was empty except for an occasional passing car. “We’re being locked out, but we’d love to work,” said one dockworker, who declined to give his name.
The crisis follows more than four months of contract negotiations between the longshore union and the Maritime Assn., which represents shipping lines and terminal operators. The parties are at loggerheads over the control of information technology at the ports.
The association wants to accelerate the use of computers, scanners, remote cameras and other tools that will eliminate hundreds of high-paid union clerk jobs. The union has said it would agree only if the association expanded union jurisdiction to jobs that are now considered management or covered by other unions. Both sides say the outcome of these talks could critically affect their long-term survival.
Calculating the economic fallout from the West Coast port shutdown is nearly impossible because the effects are so broad and unpredictable, hitting different parts of the economy with varying speed and velocity. But many economists agree that the damage already totals in the billions of dollars and will escalate quickly if the shutdown extends beyond a week.
Even after the port dispute is resolved, there will still be lengthy delays on the waterfront as the backed-up cargo works its way through a transportation system that has been thrown into disarray.
An economic report issued by Goldman Sachs on Tuesday warned that “a sluggish U.S. economy could sustain another hard body blow if a shut-off in exports and imports at West Coast ports over the past few days were to continue much longer.”
“The shutdown comes at a particularly disruptive time, as retailers stock their shelves for the holiday,” the report said. “For that reason, the Bush administration is apt to be aggressive in attempting to end the shutdown as soon as possible, although officials will be sensitive to possible political fallout if they appear to be taking sides in the labor dispute.”
A study by Martin Associates, a consulting firm, estimates that a five-day port closure will cost the U.S. economy at least $934 million a day. Meanwhile, scores of unloaded cargo ships on the West Coast remained at anchor or tied to their docks. The line is expected to grow as more ships arrive in the days ahead. Locally, 70 unloaded vessels remained at anchor or in their berths at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the third-largest harbor complex in the world. And 31 more ships are scheduled to arrive in the next two days.
If the lockout ends and union members go back to work, the waiting ships will be taken into port by harbor pilots and docked in the order of their arrival. The effort probably will proceed around the clock until the cargo is unloaded.
Although the terminal gates have been relatively calm in Southern California, non-longshore port workers elsewhere reported increasing tension and violence. Dozens of equipment repair and maintenance workers, who belong to the International Assn. of Machinists, were called off the job at terminals in Oakland by their union leaders after a mechanic was allegedly punched in the jaw by a longshore picket.
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Times staff writers Peter G. Gosselin, Evelyn Iritani and James F. Peltz contributed to this report.
