Los Angeles

LA Mayor Urges End to Port Strike

The ports are a critical trade link with Asia and the gateway not just for imports such as electronics, household goods and clothing but also U.S. exports including produce and meat.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Tuesday urged an end to a crippling port strike "before the supply chain bends and breaks."

Garcetti spoke on the day that U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez was planing to meet with negotiators for both the dockworkers' union and the maritime association, which represents shipping lines that carry cargo and port terminal operators that handle it once the ships dock.

"We have to get this done," Garcetti said. "No walkouts. No lockouts. We have to have a deal, now."

Garcetti said he has had several phone calls with Perez over the weekend and has set up a daily conference call with West Coast mayors to help resolve the dispute.

Using a football analogy, Garcetti said Perez is the right man to get the job done.

"We've got a good running back in Tom Perez," Garcetti said. "Just hand him the ball and get through the line."

Garcetti said 22 of the 33 ships sitting off the LA County coast are container ships that could take up to eight weeks to offload. He said LA has "pretty much stopped" exporting goods. City officials have been making contracts with ports in the Gulf of Mexico and on the East Coast as an alternative to ship goods.

He fears that trade may never come back if the labor dispute is not resolved.

The two sides began meeting in May, and in recent weeks their disagreements at the bargaining table have led to historically debilitating problems moving cargo through 29 seaports from Southern California to Seattle.

After a fruitless meeting Friday between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association, President Barack Obama said Saturday that Perez would come west and engage in the talks, which a federal mediator has overseen since early January. Over the weekend, Perez was in touch by phone with both sides.

The ports are a critical trade link with Asia and the gateway not just for imports such as electronics, household goods and clothing but also U.S. exports including produce and meat.

Starting Saturday, companies locked out workers who would load or unload ships, saying they would not pay weekend or holiday wage premiums to crews they accuse of intentionally slowing work to gain bargaining leverage. As a result, cranes that would otherwise be moving containers onto dockside yards were raised up, stationary and eerily quiet on normally bustling waterfronts.

It was a broadening of a partial lockout that began in January, when the maritime association stopped calling night crews to load and unload ships, saying smaller crews would instead focus on moving onto trucks and trains containers that already had been unloaded onto cargo-choked dockside yards.

The union denies slowing down and says its members want to work. It blames troubles moving cargo on larger problems with the supply chain, including a shortage of truck beds to carry containers to distribution warehouses.

On Monday, massive ships continued lining up outside the ports, laden with imports now delayed by weeks. Off the coast of Los Angeles and Long Beach, for example, 33 "congestion vessels" were awaiting space at the docks, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California — a new high since this round of disruptions began.

The last contract expired in July. The two sides have reached tentative agreements on many of the key issues, but are stuck on whether to change the process of arbitrating workplace disputes.

Several other issues have been on the table, including pay. The maritime association says average wages exceed $50 an hour; the union says wages are set between $26 to $36 an hour — though many shifts carry a premium over that range.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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