Posted on: Monday, October 7, 2002
Port talks on West Coast break off indefinitely
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
CSX Lines is planning to sail four ships loaded with containers of supplies to Hawai'i within the next week, bringing to nine the total number of ships scheduled to arrive in Honolulu by the weekend of Oct. 20.
While relief is on its way to the Islands, the rest of the nation may be looking at a long dry spell as a lockout of union workers goes into its second week.
Marathon negotiation sessions that lasted over the last four days broke off broke off last night at about 11:30 p.m. California time, after the International Longshore and Warehouse Union rejected the shipping company association's latest offer, according to a spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents the shipping companies.
"We put a comprehensive package on the table," said Steve Sugerman of the PMA. "President Bush had asked us to get back to work, and we thought this would do it."
Union representatives could not be reached for comment last night.
The PMA offer included a health plan with no employee pay portion and no deductibles, and a retirement package of $50,000 per year. It offered salaries that would make union members the highest paid blue-collar workers in the nation, Sugerman said.
It also provided job guarantees for current ILWU members as new technological measures are instituted. But it did not include the guarantees ILWU workers had been demanding: that new jobs created by new technologies be ILWU jobs as well.
"They're holding out on a fabulous contract for a handful of positions," Sugerman said. "They just walked out."
No date or time was set for negotiations to continue.
The nine ships that will be making their way to Hawai'i despite the lockout, including five Matson vessels, are sailing as part of an exemption to the lockout granted to Hawai'i late Friday evening. Sugerman said late last night that the exemption is not in danger of being revoked.
The PMA and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union also agreed Friday to give an exemption to Alaska, which is also dependent upon goods brought by ship. Cargo is also being moved for the military.
CSX's Brian Taylor, vice president and general manager for Hawai'i and Guam, said that in addition to the Consumer, which was headed toward Hawai'i this morning, and the Navigator, which departs from Oakland for Honolulu tomorrow, two ships traveling from Tacoma to Los Angeles this week will also sail to Honolulu.
The Consumer, carrying more than 800 container loads of cargo, will arrive in Honolulu on Friday, Taylor said. The Navigator, which could carry nearly 1,000 container loads, will arrive on Sunday.
The CSX Trader and the CSX Reliance are to depart Tacoma this week for Los Angeles, then depart Los Angeles for Hawai'i on the weekend.
Schedules for the Trader and Reliance are not yet firm, Taylor said, but both should arrive in Honolulu by the weekend of October 18-20.
Matson is sending five ships scheduled to arrive on consecutive days beginning Saturday and continuing through Oct. 16.
CSX Lines is also moving ships to Alaska under the exemption granted to that state.
Guam has not been granted an exemption, but Taylor said the island territory's governor, Carl T.C. Gutierrez, planned to submit a written request yesterday to PMA and the ILWU. The ILWU has already said it supports an exemption to the lockout for Guam.
A second week of a West Coast port shutdown will cause a noticeable increase in plant closings, job losses and financial market turmoil, say analysts and business leaders who are increasingly skeptical of a quick end to the labor dispute.
Already, storage facilities at beef, pork and poultry processing facilities nationwide are full, crammed with produce that can't be exported.
With nowhere to move their product, plant operators will begin shutting down today and layoffs will follow, said Mary Kay Thatcher, public policy director of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
In less than two weeks, if the shutdown continues, manufacturing plants will be grinding to a halt nationwide, farmers will be up in arms, and Asian equity and currency markets could face a full-blown crisis, said Steven Cohen, a University of California-Berkeley professor of regional planning.
"It's like draining a swamp. You start seeing all kinds of ugly creatures," he said.
Talks between the PMA and the ILWU entered a fourth day yesterday.
Sugerman said before the stalemate that the PMA would keep pushing for an extension of the old contract, which specifically forbade the kind of work slowdowns the PMA said prompted the lockout Sept. 29. The union has refused, holding out for a new three-year contract that would give it control over any jobs that come with new technology.
Implementing labor-saving technology such as electronic tracking devices puts only a small number of jobs at risk in the short term, but future jobs are at stake, as well as control of the flow of information at the ports.
The PMA has always given the ILWU jurisdiction over new technology in the past, union negotiator Joseph Wenzl said yesterday.
Both sides have agreed to resume shipping essential items to Alaska and Hawai'i. They have also moved some cargo for the U.S. military, but there will be no more exceptions to the shutdown, Sugerman said.
The number of cargo vessels stranded at the docks or backing up at anchor points has risen to about 200 since the lockout, with dozens more still en route from Asia.
A growing number of industry groups are calling for White House intervention, including use of the Taft-Hartley Act, which would force an 80-day cooling-off period. President Bush hasn't said whether he will intervene.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
