SEATTLE — Technology has been marching into West Coast ports at a much slower pace than in the rest of the world, and now it is driving the ports’ biggest labor dispute in 30 years, the Seattle Times reported.
Engineers who design ports to improve efficiency say West Coast ports are far behind the state of the art. It is common in Singapore and Rotterdam, The Netherlands, for shipping containers to be tracked by a network of electronic tags, scanners and global positioning systems as they shuttle between truck, storage yard and boat. Robotic cranes work almost independently, moving cargo around terminals.
Some of this technology has made its way to the West Coast, but with limited benefit.
Because of the labor contract with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, workers must retype the same computerized information at several points as containers move around the waterfront.
The union says it is willing to embrace technological advancements, but wants union workers to handle the data. It hasn’t been able to agree on terms with employers.
“The West Coast of the United States is one of only a handful of places in the world where this kind of technology can’t go in,” said Tom Ward, a principal engineer with JWD Group in Oakland, Calif., a port designer and consultant to the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). “There is no other place in the world where there is so much resistance.”
John Dacquisto, business agent for the union’s Local 52 in Seattle, said it welcomes computerized systems as long as the people needed to verify information, fix inaccuracies and update booking changes remain union workers.
The PMA, which represents employers, hasn’t been specific about what technologies it wants to implement, but industry consultants say models of efficiency in Europe and Asia and in U.S. railroad yards are being studied.
In Rotterdam, for example, several cranes — each with a crew of fewer than six people — can unload a ship full of containers. On West Coast ports, it typically can take 18 to 25 people per crane, Ward said.
In Hamburg, Germany, a single person can run up to four storage-yard cranes remotely by looking at a video screen. On the West Coast, up to four people are required to run a storage-yard crane, said Larry Nye, a vice president at Moffatt and Nichol Engineers in Long Beach, Calif.
Even in West Coast ports with computerized tickets that tell truckers where to pick up a container, union workers in some cases get paid to pull the ticket out of the printer and hand it to the trucker, Nye said.
Technology would change significant chunks of the process.
As it works now on the West Coast, Ward said, the system might begin when a company decides to ship computer parts to Taiwan. A shipping container is sent to the company, which records vital booking information such as sender name, receiver name, trucking company, contents of the container and container number.
The information is sent electronically to the port terminal so gatekeepers know what to expect.
A trucker hauls the container to the port gate, where the information is scanned by a union worker. A union clerk stops the driver, weighs the truck, walks around it to make sure there’s no damage to the container, and verifies the trucker’s information to ensure it matches that from the computer parts company.
The clerk instructs the trucker on where to take the container in the storage yard; it is lifted off the truck and stored, with the location recorded by a clerk on paper or in a handheld computer.
Next, a plan is drawn up to stack containers on the freighter.
When a ship is ready to load, a clerk with an updated map of containers in the yard tells a truck driver which containers to get. The container is taken out, and the location change is recorded by a clerk.
Another clerk radios to the crane operator to pick up the container and stack it on the ship.
By contrast, here’s how it works at more high-tech ports in Europe and Asia:
A truck arriving at a port gate drives through a digital or radio scanner that reads all the vital information, and it rolls over a weigh-in-motion scale. A clerk verifies the driver’s name and container information automatically.
The trucker receives a ticket with instructions on where to take the container. A computer picks out the most appropriate lifting equipment to take the container off the truck.
Once the container is stacked, its vital information and precise location is automatically recorded, and the truck drives off.
The precise location is automatically shared with the clerk who loads the ship and the crane operator.
Ward, the engineer with JWD Group, said the more modern system allows for nearly twice as many trucks to pass through gates in an hour’s time.
That’s important because ports are running out of space To keep up with trade growth over time, they will need to improve efficiency because they can’t get more land.
Automation also cuts down on expensive labor costs for shuffling and re-stacking containers, and the wasted motion and diesel emissions from forklifts and cranes that go with it.
“This is really about who’s in control,” Ward said.
“Right now, control of information is distributed throughout the clerical work force. In the future, it will be in a centrally directed communications center that acts remotely, and many more decisions will be made automatically by machines,” Ward said.
“That’s the real question; the union doesn’t want to give up control, and the PMA would like to take control of the terminals.”
Nye said the two sides need to find a balance between technology and labor.
“I don’t ever see a terminal being completely automated,” he said. “There are some serious deficiencies with that, and there is always a place for people to verify and change information,” Nye said.
“But there is a reasonable use of technology that is appropriate, and now we aren’t getting all the benefits of the technology.”