The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), representing employers at 29 ports, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents 20,000 dockworkers, have come to a tentative agreement on a key issue in ongoing contract negotiations.
News / Global Logistics
The union representing West Coast dockworkers and their employers on Monday reached a tentative agreement on a key component of the stalled labor talks that threaten to cripple cargo movement at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
About 6,000 community members and International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers made their way Thursday from the Vincent Thomas Bridge to the Maritime Museum to support hundreds of Los Angeles and Long Beach dockworkers engaged in contentious contract talks with employers.
Port and shipping industry leaders gathered here Thursday called for a swift resolution to a labor fight that is threatening the flow of cargo packages at ports along the West Coast.
Drayage, the business of carrying cargo containers by truck from a port terminal to a distribution center, warehouse, or rail ramp, is in a god-awful mess right now at ports from California to New Jersey.
Hundreds of longshore workers plan to take to the streets on January 22 to protest their employers’ decision to suspend vessel unloading night shifts at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.
Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are planning a community march down Harbor Boulevard in San Pedro to object to the Pacific Maritime Association’s move to not unload ships at night in order to move containers at congested terminal yards.
The Seattle Times
Drivers around West Seattle say they’ve never seen anything like the truck traffic that caused slowdowns and safety hazards all the way from Harbor Island to Interstate 5, most of Wednesday and Thursday.
They’re angry.
A labor dispute between terminal operators at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and their workers took another turn Tuesday, with operators being ordered to completely stop loading and unloading ships at night, starting Tuesday night.
Cargo traffic at several of the biggest U.S. West Coast ports has slowed to near gridlock, negotiators for shipping lines and terminal operators for 29 ports said on Monday as contract talks with the dockworkers’ union remain strained.
Year-over-year import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to continue to rise during most of the first half of 2015 despite significant congestion still impacting West Coast ports, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.