Following the Christmas and New Year's holidays, the congestion on the West Coast has continued to get worse through every facet of the supply chain. All West Coast ports are feeling the impact from Seattle/Tacoma down to Los Angeles/Long Beach. It is common for ships to remain at anchor for days waiting for their containers to be unloaded.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) has announced that the ILWU and PMA have jointly requested federal mediation regarding the contract negotiations on the West Coast. This announcement represents an immediate step toward achieving a contract solution. While the FMCS has been successful in helping to resolve past labor disputes, it should be noted that they cannot impose a solution on the two parties. The hope is that both sides are genuinely interested in finding a resolution to the on-going conflict.
Conflict between the ILWU and the PMA continues into the New Year as each organization has initiated actions that will further exacerbate the congestion. In an effort to gain leverage over employers, the ILWU withheld a large number of skilled crane operators from their shifts. Without the crane operators, the cargo-handling operations have experienced a drastic slow down. In response, the PMA has reduced the number of night-shift workers to mitigate the amount of container build-up that would occur if the night shifts were unloading at the proper rate.
As the Journal of Commerce reports, the ILWU caucus that began Monday morning is waiting on the PMA's response to the union's comments made on the new contract proposal.
In the midst of the negativity surrounding the West Coast congestion, some good news can be reported on the trucking industry. As the AgTC reports, the portion of the 34 hour restart rule that requires truckers to take two rest periods between 1am and 5am is being repealed. Doing this will allow truckers to travel unhindered when the roads are the least busy, and will also allow them to reset their weekly hours before 7 full days have passed.
