Ports Get Back to Business
West Coast ports began the slow process of digging out from under a mountain of cargo containers Wednesday, the day after an emergency injunction ended the 10-day lockout that had shuttered ports from San Diego to Seattle.
Dockworkers mobbed hiring halls. Railroads shipped extra locomotives to the coast to attack the backlog of containers that will soon be moving to the rails. Shipping lines fielded calls from anxious customers jockeying to get their containers of goods moved first off the docks.
Yet despite the sense of urgency, the giant Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex crawled to life Wednesday night, with heavy equipment and workers still idled at some terminals. Both dockworkers and terminal operators said the slow start was to be expected because the docks are so jammed with cargo that too many workers would simply add to the confusion until more space can be cleared. By early evening, Pier 400 was operating at about 50% of capacity, said a manager at the Maersk Inc. shipping line.
The gradual ramp-up was intentional, said Steve Sugerman, a spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Assn., which represents shipping companies. The association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union agreed to a staged resumption to avoid overwhelming the facilities, he said.
Earlier in the day, truckers began lining up hours before the scheduled opening of the terminal gates at 6 p.m. Walfred Gordillo was first in line at the Port of Los Angeles’ Pier 400.
“I haven’t made a penny in 10 days,” said Gordillo, who was picking up a container of Asian-made Christmas toys to take to a warehouse in Ontario. “Being first in line means I might be able to leave early and make another trip tonight.”
Outside an open-air hiring hall in Wilmington, wedged between oil tanks and an auto-wrecking yard, hundreds of job seekers lined up in hopes of securing longshore work.
But union bosses, and the security guards who blocked the iron gates of the hiring hall, dissuaded the longshore hopefuls. The only workers allowed in were those with “casual cards” designating them as members of the formal pool of laborers who take the dock jobs unfilled by union members. Most hope to join the union when there is an opening.
“People without a casual card, go home. You’re not going to get a job today,” came a voice over a loudspeaker. “For the rest of you guys, welcome back.”
Los Angeles Police Department officers were on hand to control the crowd and traffic. Vendors sold hot dogs and work gloves.
“This looks like a very good opportunity for all of us,” said Alfonso Guillen of Lakewood, who has been a casual worker for two years.
Wednesday’s reopening came just a day after President Bush intervened in the bitter labor dispute between the longshore workers and port management that stranded billions of dollars worth of cargo at 29 ports at the height of the holiday shipping season.
Using his authority under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, Bush won a federal court order Tuesday forcing the ports to reopen on grounds that the nation’s economy and security were threatened. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup next week will consider extending his temporary order, which would mandate an 80-day cooling-off period retroactive to Oct. 8.
The Pacific Maritime Assn. locked out ILWU dockworkers Sept. 29, claiming the union was using go-slow tactics to pressure management after months of fruitless contract talks.
The 10,500-member union said delays were related to a crush of holiday season cargo and efforts by their members to observe strict safety procedures after the deaths of five union members on West Coast docks this year.
The union had vehemently opposed federal intervention on grounds that it gives management little incentive to bargain, while subjecting the union to court sanctions for port bottlenecks. ILWU leaders Wednesday accused the Bush administration of siding with employers and predicted that the Pacific Maritime Assn would go to court at the slightest hint of a slowdown.
“These 80 days will not be a cooling-off period,” said ILWU International President James Spinosa. “PMA will start alleging slowdowns by Thursday.... We expect the employers will be dragging us to court daily, trying to bankrupt the union and throw our leaders in jail.”
The court order requires the union to work at a normal pace, but union leaders say they will insist that their members adhere strictly to safety standards.
“Today, we are going to start work in very congested terminals among many vessels fully loaded and rails backed up to the state line,” said Ramon Ponce de Leon Jr., president of the union’s Local 13 in Los Angeles. “Therefore, we must first think of our safety.”
Ponce de Leon disputed management’s assertion that calls for safety were actually coded messages exhorting union members to resort to a work slowdown.
“Safety is not a gimmick with us,” he said. “We’ve had too many deaths on the docks. Besides, we have far too many other pressing concerns right now than to even think about any kind of a job action. Our concern is to move this cargo and go home in one piece.”
Pacific Maritime Assn. officials said Wednesday that they would monitor the union’s performance and reserved the right to pursue court sanctions for any slowdowns. But they said they hope to avoid going back to court.
“That’s the last place we want to be right now,” spokesman Sugerman said.
Throughout the day Wednesday, shipping lines and terminals prepared their operations for the resumption of work in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s largest harbor complex.
Mechanics serviced hundreds of utility trucks and other equipment used to move cargo around terminals. They also turned their attention to the towering cranes that load and unload container ships.
Big rigs began arriving in port to pick up stranded loads and ferry them to their destinations. The diesel trucks queued up by the score to pick up freight for anxious retailers and manufacturers, which had pressured Bush to impose Taft-Hartley.
“They all want their cargo as soon as possible,” said Scott Dailey, a spokesman for Singapore-based APL, which operates 80 cargo ships and three West Coast terminal facilities, including one in the Port of Los Angeles. “... But we’ve got containers stacked everywhere you can stack them. We’re going to do our best, but there are going to be some real constraints.”
At the Pasha Stevedoring & Terminals facility in the Port of Los Angeles, the company began contacting longshore workers, preparing cargo records and checking its inventory of equipment.
“We’re all trying to deal with a sensitive situation and be adults about it,” said Jeffrey Burgin, Pasha’s senior vice president. “There are bigger things than us. There is the U.S. economy. The Middle East situation. We can’t put ourselves in a box and think we are the top of the pinnacle. It’s time to move forward with the temporary restraining order and abide by it.”
Meanwhile, companies that prepare customs declarations for arriving cargo geared up for the enormous amount of work ahead. At Global Transportation Services Inc. in Redondo Beach, Executive Vice President Guy Fox said his firm had to process about 2,000 declarations for retailers and manufacturers.
“We’ve got to locate the ships, get their arrival times, determine the customs duties and pay them,” Fox said. “This is a massive job. We will be working around the clock.”
More than 200 cargo ships are waiting to be unloaded in ports from San Diego to Seattle, with about 120 vessels either docked or at anchorages in and around the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor complex.
Analysts had estimated that the shutdown cost the U.S. economy $1 billion to $2 billion a day in lost sales, wages and productivity. But with logistics experts predicting that it may take six to eight weeks to sort out the mess on the docks, the ill effects are likely to linger for months.
For example, Gardena-based Nissan North America said the lockout caused a backlog of almost 15,000 Nissan and Infiniti cars shipped from Japan. As a result, the automaker expects its October sales volume in the U.S. to be down as much as 15% from a year ago.
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Times staff writers Abigail Goldman and John O’Dell contributed to this report.
