LOS ANGELES — Labor leaders called on Friday for health and safety inspectors at backlogged West Coast ports to monitor working conditions and to squelch shippers’ claims that longshoreman are staging work slowdowns, Reuters reports.
Four days after President Bush (news – web sites) invoked the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to end a 10-day lockout of dock workers by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), the longshoremen may be back at work but they are at loggerheads over how to handle the unprecedented pileup of cargo.
John Pachtner of the PMA, which represents shippers and terminal operators at 29 ports from Seattle to San Diego, said dockworkers were moving about 25 percent less cargo than normal since returning to work on Wednesday evening.
“We see limited supplies and late arrivals of the semi drivers who move containers around within the terminals and of clerks who tally the movements of cargo,” Pachtner said.
Port employers have said a sustained work slowdown would put longshoremen in violation of an emergency federal court order that opened the ports on Tuesday, but Pachtner said no immediate legal action is being contemplated.
But union officials blamed the slower work pace on the logjam of cargo and on worker shortages.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on Friday, asked Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao and the governors of California, Oregon and Washington to send federal inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (news – web sites) (OSHA) to the overloaded docks to monitor working conditions.
In a letter to Chao, Sweeney also noted that inspectors could substantiate whether “deviations from what the PMA contends is a ‘normal and reasonable rate of speed’ arise from legitimate concerns over safety.”
“By dispatching government inspectors to the docks, you can help take this issue out of play so that the parties can concentrate on the hard work of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement,” Sweeney wrote.
HIRE MORE WORKERS
The same day, the dockworkers’ union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, called on the PMA to promote casual dock workers to full-time union status and to hire more casual workers to move the cargo faster.
ILWU president James Spinosa encouraged the public, small businesses and retailers to complain to the PMA, and accused the employer group of trying to weaken the union.
“The PMA has the power to move this cargo safely and efficiently, but they need to hire more hands,” Spinosa said in a statement. “Instead, the PMA has chosen to continue its pattern of holding the American public and economy hostage by serving its own interests first.”
U.S. Department of Labor Kathleen Harrington said Chao and Sweeney spoke about the matter but the labor secretary declined to send additional inspectors to the ports, though federal inspectors have met with ILWU leaders on the West Coast, Harrington said.
“(Chao) reassured Mr. Sweeney that safety is always a top priority and we will be monitoring ports very closely,” Harrington said. “We are watching very, very closely and keeping the lines of communications open.”
U.S. labor officials disputed Sweeney’s contention that monitoring of the ports was “imperative” because injury rates for dockworkers were more than twice the national average.
MORE INJURIES
Federal labor statistics for 2000 show that dockworkers lost 4.9 days per 100 work days due to injuries, compared to an average of 3 days of lost work per 100 work days for all other industries.
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and Washington Gov. Gary Locke declined the unions’ calls for round-the-clock monitoring, but sent inspectors to check out specific complaints. California Gov. Gray Davis (news – web sites) planned to put additional inspectors at three commercial ports.
Kitzhaber’s spokesman Tom Towslee said safety consultants inspected the Port of Portland and left after finding no safety problems.
“They do not plan to be there on Monday unless asked,” Towslee said.
Steve Pierce, spokesman for Washington Department of Labor and Industries, said inspectors reviewed the dockworkers’ hours and break schedules and how fast they could safely operate heavy equipment at two Washington state ports.
Pierce said, “We will be assessing over the weekend what we found and will make decisions about what we do.”
ILWU officials complained that paperwork and traffic at the ports was so snarled that truck drivers waited hours only to be sent away with no cargo, and rail yards were unable to handle the number of containers that could usually be shipped.
The PMA had locked out 10,500 ILWU dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports from San Diego to Seattle, accusing them of an illegal slowdown that cut productivity in half. Union officials denied it.
At Hanjin terminal at the port of Long Beach trucks were lined up for over a mile by noon on Thursday. The combined ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach are the nation’s busiest.
The West Coast port lockout, the most disruptive port dispute to hit the region since the 1970s, was estimated to cost the U.S. economy up to $2 billion per day as mountains of cargo sat stranded on the docks and ships.
That toll was already being felt across America, as firms predicted lower earnings based on port closures.
Negotiations between the two sides have broken off, but may restart during the 80-day cooling off period mandated by Taft-Hartley. A shutdown could resume if they emerge from the hiatus without a firm contract agreement.