Labor Dispute Criticized For Slowing West Coast Port Traffic

Transcript

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Here in the United States, business people are asking the federal government to intervene in a labor dispute. It's not with their own workers; it's with dock workers and shipping companies on the West Coast. They've been struggling for months to reach new labor agreement. Now shippers are accusing dockworkers of deliberately slowing their work. The speed at which they do their jobs affects congestion at several ports, including the nation's largest port complex in Southern California. NPR's Nathan Rott was on the waterfront at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: To get an idea of the congestion, and to get a birds-eye-view of it, try the Marine Exchange in San Pedro, California.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hyundai-Tokyo traffic. So you'll be needing an outside anchorage. What is your deepest draft?

ROTT: Think of it like an air traffic control for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Maximum draft is 12.7 meters.

ROTT: The Marine Exchange sits on top of a hill, overlooking the 16 square miles of cranes and shipping containers that make up the nation's busiest port complex just to the South. You can see Catalina Island to the west and more than a dozen container, tanker and charter ships in between.

CAPTAIN KIP LOUTTIT: Those are the 14 ships that are anchored that don't want to be.

ROTT: Captain Kip Louttit is in charge here. He's got a list of all the ships - who they are, what they are and where they're coming from.

LOUTTIT: This one here that had come from Africa through Europe, through the canal.

ROTT: The Panama Canal.

LOUTTIT: And he's been here since the middle of October.

ROTT: Yeah, since October 24.

LOUTTIT: So he's just sitting out there waiting for someone to tell him what to do next.

ROTT: The ship he's referring to is packed with stacks of red, blue and green containers - imports that should be off of the ship, on a truck and/or already at the destination. And with holiday season just around the corner...

JONATHAN GOLD: It's definitely costing money to retailers.

ROTT: Jonathan Gold is with the National Retail Federation.

GOLD: It's having an impact, not just on retail, but for anybody who's relying on the ports to move their commerce either in or out of the country.

ROTT: Down on the water at the Port of Long Beach, cranes slide back and forth, off-loading a massive container ship.

LEE PETERSON: And this is one of the smaller ones - maybe 5,000 container units here.

ROTT: Lee Peterson is with the Port of Long Beach. He points to a bigger ship across the channel.

PETERSON: And then that ship down there, the next is probably 11 or 12.

ROTT: Eleven to 12,000 containers?

PETERSON: Yes. The biggest ships we have coming into Long Beach right now are 14,000 container units.

ROTT: Peterson says that's one of the many things contributing to congestion here - bigger ships than ever before. Increased demand, misplaced equipment and according to shippers, orchestrated slowdowns by the dockworkers' union, or ILWU. Steve Getzug is a spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping lines and terminal operators in 29 West Coast ports. He says in Long Beach and Los Angeles, the ILWU is refusing to dispatch skilled workers to transport cargo.

STEVE GETZUG: And this leads to gridlock. And it's making a bad situation much, much worse.

ROTT: The aim, Getzug says, is to use the slowdowns as leverage in contract negotiations with the shippers. Now, the ILWU calls those claims boldfaced lies, saying in a statement that the Pacific Maritime Association is trying to smear the union's name and deflect responsibility. Both sides maintain that they would like to find a workable agreement. Retailers and manufacturers estimate that a total stoppage could cost the U.S. economy about $2 billion a day, in which case, nobody would win. Nathan Rott, NPR News, Los Angeles. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.