transportationreport BY MARK B. SOLOMON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR – NEWS
MARITIME/PORTS
THE NINE-MONTH LABOR-MANAGEMENT DISPUTE
on the West Coast waterfront spread misery across a broad
front. But perhaps no one had it worse than the Port of
Oakland.
Like other ports, Oakland, the nation’s fifth-busiest con-tainerport, faced mounting backlogs and diminished productivity as tensions escalated between the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and waterfront management represented by the Pacific Maritime
Association (PMA). At the height of the standoff in
mid-February, Oakland’s largest terminal was operating at
half of its normal capacity, and its second largest was functioning at 65 percent, according to J. Christopher Lytle, the
port’s executive director.
Vessels that would normally discharge Asian imports at
either the port of Los Angeles or Long Beach and then call
up the coast at Oakland were unwilling to deal with more
congestion at Oakland. Instead, many turned around after
unloading in Southern California and returned to Asia. As
a result, consignees with product to be distributed through-
out Northern California were forced to find costlier land
transportation to get goods to market.
But what set Oakland apart from its brethren were the
problems it encountered moving U.S. exports. Exports
account for 55 percent of Oakland’s traffic mix, understandable given the port’s proximity to the agricultural
abundance of California’s verdant Central Valley. With
vessel operations hamstrung and with no other place to go,
exporters watched helplessly as their perishables sat, and in
some cases rotted, in warehouses. And they took out their
frustrations on port officials. “Customers are very upset,”
Lytle said in a phone interview several days before a tentative five-year collective bargaining agreement was reached
Feb. 20.
That may be why a $100 million project to build a global
logistics hub at the port has taken on added significance.
Over the next two to three years, the port and the city
plan to turn a decommissioned army base on the facility’s
outer harbor into a 360-acre logistics center that includes
a warehousing network, trans-loading facilities, and a dry-bulk terminal. Westbound goods, whether they are bulk
agricultural commodities or dry bulk shipments, would be
Regrets, recriminations, diversions:
the legacy of bad times
at West Coast ports
From business losses to ruptured relationships, the damage from the
recently resolved labor dispute continues to mount. But was it enough
to spark permanent change?
