LA Ports strike settlement reached

LA Ports strike settlement reached

By Brian Sumers Staff Writer

Posted:   12/04/2012 09:37:16 PM PST

Updated:   12/04/2012 11:47:06 PM PST

http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_22124434/ports-strike-nears-settlement?IAD...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announces that an agreement has been reached in the port strike as the involved parties applaud. (Chuck Bennett / Staff Photographer)

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A more than week-long strike at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach ended late Tuesday night, allowing for members of the International Longshore Warehouse Union to return to work and for the nation's largest port complex to return to full operation.

The sides reached an agreement just after a federal mediator arrived to engage them in what were expected to be more even more serious talks.
"I'm really pleased to tell all of you that my 10,000 longshore workers at the ports of LA and Long Beach are going to start moving cargo on these ships," Ray Familathe, vice president of the ILWU, said at a news conference. "We're going to get these ships serviced, and we're going to get cargo moved throughout the supply chains and this country."
The deal was announced at around 10:30 p.m. by Familathe, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Stephen Berry, the lead negotiator for the coalition of employers involved in the strike. In the 24 hours before the deal was reached, Villaraigosa had taken an active role in negotiations.
"Tonight is the end of a very long journey," Berry said outside Banning's Landing Community Center in Wilmington, where negotiations had been taking place. "We're delighted that the terminals will be operating again, that the cargo will be flowing and that we can work together with the employees to add value to this community and the nation."
Earlier Tuesday, both sides said the presence of director George H. Cohen of

the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, who arrived at around 8:30 p.m. and was to begin leading discussions, signaled a new stage in the talks, which had stalled Tuesday morning after both sides talked throughout the night but could not reach a resolution.

 
Representatives from both sides said Tuesday morning that Cohen would help management and union officials focus on the key issues in reaching a deal to reopen all terminals at both ports - by far the largest and most important two ports in the United States.
The sides were actually close to reaching an agreement even before Cohen arrived, possibly, several sources said, because union officials were concerned the mediator might change the course of discussions in a manner unfavorable to them.
Workers in the 800-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit, many of whom had been working under terms of a contract that expired in June 2010, began their strike in the middle of last week.
It started on Nov. 27 at APM Terminals Pacific Ltd., the largest operator at both ports, and broadened the next day, eventually shutting down three of six terminals at the Port of Long Beach and seven of eight at the Port of Los Angeles once thousands of other longshore workers - many of whom have no direct connection to the Office Clerical Unit - refused to cross picket lines.
Sources involved in the talks say the negotiations, which did not begin until Thursday, were at times been frustrating, with both sides sometimes believing they had made progress only to see it disappear as the talks continued. Union and management representatives quietly accused each other of being unprepared to engage in serious talks, at least until marathon talks began Monday night.
Throughout the strike, union officials had said the next set of contracts would need to prohibit terminal operators from outsourcing clerical jobs to lower paid employees in other countries and states, a process they say had already begun. Clerical unit workers handle a range of back office duties for terminal operators at both ports.
In response, management officials countered that they were not sending jobs elsewhere, and that new contracts would need to allow them flexibility to hire workers only when they're needed. They said under old contracts they were sometimes forced to fill jobs that did not need to exist.
Union negotiators had resisted management calls for a mediator for several days, saying a resolution would be better worked out through informal talks.
But they acquiesced Tuesday morning after Villaraigosa failed to help the sides reach a deal during negotiations that lasted all night. In the hopes of resolving the strike, Villaraigosa arrived at the talks at little before midnight Monday, coming directly from the airport following a nine-day trade mission to South America funded in part by the Port of Los Angeles.
Both ports -- which will soon once again bustle with activity -- remained relatively quiet on Tuesday, with a handful of strikers at each affected terminal maintaining picket lines.
At the Port of Los Angeles - the largest port in the United States by container volume - 10 ships were sitting dockside, untouched, since last week, while 20 ships scheduled to arrive recently were diverted, spokesman Phillip Sanfield said. Other ships have been waiting off the coast for the strike to end and should arrive at the port complex soon.
At least 11 ships went instead to the Port of Oakland, while at least five were sent to ports in Mexico, Sanfield said. While ships have docked elsewhere, many of the containers scheduled to come to Southern California have simply waited on ships and at other ports until the strike ends, port officials say. Now that the strike has been resolved, the containers will return to the Los Angeles area.
Combined, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach account for more than 1 million direct and indirect jobs in the region, and move 40 percent of all containerized trade nationwide, according to port officials. More than $400 billion worth of goods flow through the ports annually, which support nearly 3 million jobs in a vast supply chain across the country.
Economists estimated the strike cost the Southern California economy a little more than $1 billion a day, but some have called that figure grossly misleading, saying many of the nonperishable goods stuck on containers will eventually reach markets, and noting that the four remaining open terminals continued to process cargo.
brian.sumers@dailybreeze.com