Retailers and manufacturers have shifted cargo away from the L.A. and Long Beach ports, threatening local jobs. The ports vow to bring that trade back, but it won't be easy.
The ILWU, the union representing dockworkers across the West Coast, is at the bargaining table with the PMA, the group representing shipping companies. The current contract expires on July 1.Some shippers switched to other ports because of fears overbetween the 22,000-member West Coast ports International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Assn., representing 70 employers at the 29-port West Coast seaports.
Mario Cordero, executive director of the neighboring Port of Long Beach, acknowledged that “my colleagues in other parts of the U.S. are doing a very good job in investing in their own infrastructure to better their ports. American shippers have more choices. “East Coast ports have benefited by getting more cargo during our labor negotiations. By the first quarter of next year, we’ll have that labor contract in place and by next summer, the East Coast longshore union will be negotiating its contract,” Seroka said.
Even after the 2016 completion of the Panama Canal expansion, the key transit point allowing bigger ships from Asia to travel to the Gulf Coast and East Coast, those ports still cannot accommodate the biggest container ships coming out of Asia, said Jerry Nickelsburg, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast and professor of economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
For workers, life has become more difficult as consumers retrench amid high inflation and fears of recession. The fallout may leave even more truckers and warehouse workers vying for jobs that cargo diversion has taken away.Some companies were riding high and expanding during the short pandemic boom and were unprepared for the retrenching.
Mario Gonzalez, once the company’s director of operations, said he’s been working without salary to find new jobs for the people who worked for him.
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