Ship from L.A. resumes flow of cargo to Hawai'i
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Consumer, a CSX Lines ship loaded with food, paper products and other necessities of life on an isolated Pacific island is to depart Los Angeles and set sail for Hawai'i this morning, shipping officials said yesterday.
Despite labor tensions and an ongoing lockout of union workers at West Coast harbors, an exemption granted the 50th state late Friday has opened the gates for at least a half-dozen ships to load up and head across the Pacific this week.
The Consumer and a Matson ship out of Seattle, the S.S. Kaua'i, will arrive in Honolulu next weekend.
CSX Lines, which is also sending ships to Alaska under an exemption, will launch a second Hawai'i-bound ship, the Navigator, from Oakland on Tuesday evening.
Matson officials said the S.S. Kaua'i would depart tomorrow from Seattle. Four additional Matson ships will follow: the S.S. Matsonia from Oakland, the S.S. Ewa from Los Angeles, the MV R.J. Pfeiffer from Oakland and the S.S. Chief Gadao from Los Angeles.
Hawai'i consumers won't notice the resumed service immediately, shipping officials said. The trip across the Pacific takes nearly five days.
The Consumer was unloaded just before the lockout was imposed Sept. 29, and has been beneath the cranes ready to load. The other ships preparing to depart for Hawai'i had to be off-loaded of incoming freight that had been on the ships for a week.
Matson's ships will arrive daily, from Saturday through at least the following Wednesday.
Pacific Maritime Association, representing more than 80 shipping companies and terminal operators, and the International Longshore Workers Union, representing more than 10,500 dockworkers, agreed Friday to grant lockout exemptions for both Hawai'i and Alaska. The governors and congressional leaders of each state sent emergency messages warning that their populations were running out of food and other necessities.
An exemption also was granted to the military, and the ILWU has proposed another exemption for Guam.
Meanwhile, ships from ports throughout the Pacific region loaded with goods to supply the contiguous 48 states sat idle while negotiators for PMA and the ILWU met into the night yesterday, working with a federal mediator to try to reach a settlement that would restore service to the rest of the country.
Negotiations are to resume this morning.
"We're still going," ILWU spokesman Steve Stallone said. "That, at least, is encouraging."
West Coast shipping companies and dockworkers had been trying to negotiate a new contract for months, with talks growing increasingly tense.
The association closed the ports last weekend, saying dockworkers had been staging work slowdowns, and ports would not be reopened until the union agreed to a new contract or extended the old one.
The union denies any work slowdowns, saying workers simply were working "to rule" for safety reasons.
Hawai'i businesses had been stockpiling goods, and most said they had enough inventory to weather a week or two of cargo disruption.
Still, after five days of shutdown, cutbacks in work hours had begun to stack up in industries from trucking to shipping, along with increased costs for air freight for some businesses. Fear was growing that a protracted shutdown could seriously harm the state's economy.
Norma Acob, managing director of Commodity Forwarders, which works to bring in air freight from the Mainland to retailers such as Safeway, said last week she had chartered a 747 and a DC-10 to bring in goods this weekend, and a DC-8 was expected tomorrow.
Mark Teruya, president of Armstrong Produce Ltd., said consumers were likely to feel the the effects at the supermarket: Air freight is up to 2 1/2 times as expensive as transport by ship.
