NEW YORK — As negotiations aimed at resolving the shutdown of West Coast ports continued, truckers, train operators and other transportation officials braced for the massive cleanup that will be needed whenever the docks reopen, Monday’s Wall Street Journal reported.
More than 200 ships have backed up in the eight days since the ship terminal operators locked out dockworkers at the 29 ports from San Diego to Seattle. When the shutdown ends and dockworkers start moving cargo, transportation executives say, the cargo surge will be huge. They expect a Herculean task clearing the ships already in berths and then coordinating the flow of ships with the trucks and rail cars that will haul off the goods. Meanwhile, ships have been arriving at a rate of about 14 a day.
“Sooner or later the freight that is building up behind the dam on the West Coast will burst and flood the ports and will only be worked off slowly by railroads and trucks,” says Thomas Finkbiner, chief executive of Quality Distribution Inc., a closely held trucking company in Tampa, Fla., and chairman of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver.
Representatives of the dockworkers union and terminal operators met for the fourth straight day Sunday under federal mediation in San Francisco in an effort to resolve the lockout. The main issue is whether the union will represent workers doing jobs created by the implementation of technology. Full-time dockworkers, who load and unload cargo, earn about $106,000 a year.
The White House continued to monitor the situation closely. Administration officials still are researching the implications of invoking the 1947 Taft- Hartley Act — including appointing a board of inquiry, which would be the first step toward seeking an injunction to end management’s lockout. President Bush is reluctant to go that route unless it is absolutely necessary, senior aides say. Still, administration officials are keen to see the ports reopen to limit the economic damage from the dispute.
The dock shutdown, entering its second week, comes at a critical time for moving cargo through the pipeline for the Christmas buying season, a fact that has led retailing groups to ask the Bush administration to intervene.
Terminal operators and ship companies say that with the current backlog of cargo stuck in the system, it could take three or four weeks to catch up.
The docks already were crammed with about 10% more cargo than usual because of a cargo surge in September. That will slow cranes and trucks trying to process the goods.
To help move the goods, railroads are staging cars and locomotives on the West Coast to prepare for the sudden influx of goods. Trucking companies are scrambling to lock up land near the ports to store the rigs they will need when the cargo flows. Retailers worry about whether the thousands of containers sitting on ships laden with toys, apparel, electronic goods and shoes will be unloaded in time to reach holiday shoppers.