Port clerks weigh their options as talks stall

It looked like a typical Wednesday afternoon at the nation’s largest seaport complex, but hanging over every crane lift and container stacking at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach was the threat of a strike.

Early that morning, a representative for 17 of the world’s biggest oceangoing shipping lines and the leader of the ports’ unionized clerks -- who have been involved in extensive contract negotiations since July 1 -- declared that they were at an impasse.

Stephen Berry, the negotiator for the shipping lines and port terminal operators, talked briefly about what he described as a fair contract offer. But John Fageaux Jr., president of the small but powerful local that handles all of the paperwork for ships entering and leaving the ports, said he would consult with other union officials about when and where picket lines would be established.

The last contract for the 930-member Office Clerical Unit, Local 63 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, expired July 1 and the two sides remain at odds over wage increases and hiring practices.

The clerks have elected their own officers and conducted their own contract talks since the mid-1990s. A strike by Local 63 members alone would amount to a thinly stretched line of pickets that would hardly be noticeable among the constant movement of trucks, cranes and freight.

But the clerks are part of the 15,000-member ILWU, and ILWU officials have indicated that the 7,000 members who work at the ports would honor the clerks’ picket lines, which could bring commerce there to a halt.

A strike lasting a day or two would not cause a lot of business disruptions, experts said, but anything longer would have serious regional and national repercussions.

The ports handle more than 40% of the nation’s containerized cargo, and goods entering here reach all of the contiguous 48 states. That’s why federal officials have taken increasing interest in the talks as they dragged on through more than one strike threat without agreement.

“The key fact is that these two ports, along with Port Hueneme and San Diego, are responsible for 12% of the economic activity in Southern California,” said John Husing, an economist with expertise in freight movement. “That means that one dollar out of every $8.50 of economic activity here is tied up in the ports.”

An expert who regularly tracks cargo movement through the nation’s 10 busiest ports for some of the nation’s biggest retailers put it another way.

“It’s all about how long it lasts. One day and you can recover quickly, but the economic impacts get to be exponentially worse the longer you go,” said Paul Bingham, a Washington-based economist at the business research firm Global Insight.

“Once a strike happens, retailers have very few options for diverting cargo, and it mostly winds up sitting in limbo out on the water,” he added. “That’s why, here inside the Beltway, the policy committees have begun to take notice of these talks.”

The local ports haven’t witnessed a strike since 1971, when a walkout of more than 100 days finally ended when President Nixon invoked the seldom used Taft-Hartley Act to force the ports to reopen. In 2002, President Bush did the same after an 11-day lockout of West Coast port workers by shipping lines cost the U.S. economy as much as $15 billion.

Wednesday afternoon, more than 18 hours after both sides had declared the impasse, another peak shift for cargo movement at the ports had passed without incident. Union leaders huddled at a Long Beach restaurant to discuss their options.

Port customers are nervous about the possibility of a sudden walkout.

Altaf Lalani, vice president for sales and marketing for Lantech Systems Inc., a small Torrance tech firm that makes products such as high-end computer gaming systems and dual- and quad-processor computer servers, remembered 2002, when the 11-day lockout of union workers cost his company plenty in terms of additional shipping costs and delays.

“That’s our money sitting out there stranded on a boat and there is nothing we can do about it,” Lalani said.

ron.white@latimes.com