Ports will close if shippers detect deliberate work slowdown
By Justin Pritchard
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — West Coast ports that handle billions of dollars of goods should remain open unless shipping lines conclude the dockworkers they employ are staging deliberate work slowdowns.
Associated Press
The longshore union has promised not to strike, and shipping lines have said they will lock out the 10,500 workers who staff docks at the nation's 29 major Pacific ports only if they show up but don't do their jobs as efficiently as normal.
West Coast ports will operate, short of a work slowdown, while the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association negotiate a contract. The old contract is being extended day to day.
The contract between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association expired Monday, though both sides approved 24-hour extensions Monday and yesterday. The deal covers ports from San Diego to Seattle that last year handled $260 billion in cargo, according to the association.
The union hasn't circulated word of a slowdown, and an association spokesman said yesterday he didn't expect any such labor disruption as long as the two sides kept talking.
But shipping lines say longshore workers staged slowdowns just after the past two contracts expired — in 1996 and 1999 — while both sides remained at the table, cutting productivity in half at some port terminals.
The union denies that charge. "They worked the way they were supposed to work," said union spokes-man Steve Stallone. "They just didn't bust their butts overtime. And that is what the PMA described as a slowdown."
"As long as a contract remains in place, there won't be an effort to organize a slowdown," said Robin Lanier of the West Coast Waterfront Coalition, which represents shippers and transportation providers.
