Posted on: Thursday, October 10, 2002

Docks slowly come back to life

By Marla Dickerson, Louis Sahagun and Dan Weikel
Los Angeles Times

The first ship to go through the Los Angeles main channel yesterday morning was from Hawai'i. The Lihue, headed for Matson's container terminal, passed other vessels idled in the port of Los Angeles until later yesterday. Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — West Coast ports began the slow process of digging out from under a mountain of cargo containers yesterday, the day after an emergency injunction ended the 10-day lockout that had shuttered ports from San Diego to Seattle.

Dockworkers filled the hiring halls. Railroads shipped extra locomotives to the coast to attack the backlog of containers that will soon be moving to the rails. Shipping lines fielded calls from anxious customers jockeying to get their containers of goods moved first off the docks.

At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, truckers lined up hours before the gates reopened at 6 p.m. yesterday.

Later in the evening, the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, the nation's busiest, was coming slowly to life, but heavy equipment and workers were still idled at some terminals.

For Hawai'i, the resumption of West Coast dock activity means ships that have been waiting for days will be worked first instead of ships that would have been loaded under the exemption to the shutdown granted by the shipping companies to the state late last week.

While the backlog may delay the normal resumption of service to the Islands, the state's two biggest shipping companies were able to get several ships loaded with cargo and under way for Hawai'i under the exemption granted the state.

The first cargo ship to arrive in Hawai'i since the shutdown will be a CSX Lines ship scheduled to reach Honolulu tomorrow. Three cargo ships owned by Matson Navigation Co. were able to leave under the exemption, with the first scheduled to arrive Saturday and the rest possibly late Sunday, said Jeff Hull, company spokesman.

Three other Matson ships are sitting off ports in Oakland, Los Angeles and Seattle, but they do not have scheduled departure dates, Hull said. "It is likely not going to be any sooner than the weekend," Hull said.

Matson and CSX Lines are responsible for bringing in nearly 90 percent of Hawai'i's goods. Before the lockout last month, Matson had four Hawai'i arrivals per week.

"Clearly, the exemption did help," Hull said yesterday. "To have some work done this week and get three ships is significant. But long-term, it is difficult to say when we will go back to normal service."

Yesterday's reopening of the West Coast docks came just a day after President Bush intervened in the labor standoff that has stranded billions of dollars worth of cargo at the height of the pre-holidays shipping season. Using his authority under the 1947 Taft Hartley Act, Bush won a federal court order Tuesday forcing the ports to reopen.

The Pacific Maritime Association, the employers group representing shipping lines and terminal operators, locked out the International Longshore and Warehouse Union dockworkers Sept. 29, claiming the ILWU was using go-slow tactics to pressure management after months of failed efforts to hammer out a new labor agreement.

The union said delays were related to a crush of cargo as the holidays draw loser and efforts by ILWU members to observe strict safety procedures in the aftermath of the deaths of five workers on the docks this year.

Although the court order requires the union to work at a "normal" pace, Ramon Ponce de Leon Jr., president of the ILWU's Local 13 in Los Angeles, urged union members to "work safe."

"Today, we are going to start work in very congested terminals among many vessels fully loaded and rails backed up to the state line," Ponce de Leon said. "Therefore, we must first think of our safety."

Ponce de Leon disputed management's assertion that calls for safety were actually coded messages exhorting union members to resort to a work slowdown.

"Safety is not a gimmick with us," he said. "We've had too many deaths on the docks. Besides, we have far too many other pressing concerns right now than to even think about any kind of a job action. Our concern is to move this cargo and go home in one piece."

Pacific Maritime Association officials yesterday reserved the right to pursue court sanctions against the union for any slowdowns, but said they hope it won't come to that.

"That's that last place we want to be right now," said PMA spokesman Steve Sugerman of further wrangling in federal court. "We're confident that normal operations will resume with the reopening of the ports."

Advertiser staff writer Mike Gordon contributed to this report.