U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said that West Coast port operations would return to normal Saturday evening after port employers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) reached a tentative five-year agreement late Friday.
While Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and ILWU members must still ratify the agreement, both sides agreed to ensure normal operations resume at all 29 West Coast ports starting Saturday evening, Perez told reporters in a conference call late Friday. PMA represents the companies that operate the ships and terminals that serve the ports.
It's unclear what that means for shippers, since it will take months to clear the backlog of containers clogging the ports, particularly at the Port of Los Angles and Port of Long Beach, which handle as much as 40 percent of the apparel, footwear and sporting goods imported from Asia. As reported last week, delays at the ports were threatening millions of dollars in sales and jobs in the sporting goods industry.
The breakthrough came amid mounting pressure from the Obama Administration, which dispatched Perez to San Francisco last week after the PMA halted vessel loading and unloading operations for the second time in two weeks to avoid paying overtime wages to ILWU workers it said were intentionally slowing down work.
Perez warned the two sides Thursday that he would move the negotiations to Washington D.C. if they failed to reach an agreement Friday. The threat indicated the Obama Administration's determination to avoid a lock out or strike that could shut down the ports completely and slow economic growth.
Under a provision of the Taft-Hartley Act, the president can impose a stand down period between labor and management to ensure the country's transportation infrastructure continues to function during labor disputes. A president has not invoked the provision since 2002, when President George Bush stepped in after the PMA locked out ILWU workers effectively closing the ports. The two sides came to an agreement 10 days later, but only after costing importers and exporters billions of dollars in lost sales.
