Shipping containers on the Port of Seattle.
Patti Domm | CNBC
Tensions are rising in West Coast port labor battles as unions and port management commerce accusations about employee productiveness and the awarding of job assignments.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has been accused of using slowdown tactics which have decreased cargo dealing with, based on a report in commerce publication JOC.
The finger-pointing comes at a time when labor negotiations between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association (which represents the terminals and ocean carriers) are about to enter a fourth month. Dockworkers have been working with out a contract since July.
According to the report, the slowdown resulted in decreased productiveness on the Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma ports, however based on the CNBC Supply Chain Heat Map, operations at these ports have been in line with the ports’ latest productiveness and there have been no vital cargo dealing with points recorded.
The CNBC Supply Chain Heat Map receives knowledge on the each day productiveness of ports starting from vessel anchorage, vessel time in port, the wait time for import and export containers in terminals, in addition to rail wait instances, and truck pickups.
Officials on the Port of Seattle-Tacoma informed CNBC that final week there was a small variety of picketers at Seattle’s Terminal 5 protesting the terminal over utilizing the Machinists Union as an alternative of the ILWU to carry out “cold ironing”, a course of the place ships can use shore energy whereas docked. CNBC was informed the vessel operation was idled for one shift and the difficulty was resolved. The terminal is utilized by SSA Marine.
“Operations in The Northwest Seaport Alliance gateway are running smoothly with terminals in Seattle and Tacoma operating at normal levels of productivity,” mentioned John Wolfe, chief government officer of The Northwest Seaport Alliance.
Jerome Roberts, GVP of selling at provide chain consulting firm Blume Global, informed CNBC the one shift protest had no lasting productiveness affect.
“The data collected by our platform has consistently shown vessel turnaround time and dwell time have shown no meaningful shift in direction,” mentioned Roberts. “Over the last few weeks, it appears productivity and port activity has been consistent respectively across the ports at Oakland, Seattle, Long Beach, and even Los Angeles, which recently had a labor slowdown.”
“The ILWU is working and negotiating, and we’ve done both successfully for nearly 90 years” mentioned ILWU Coast Committeeman Cameron Williams. “Unfounded rumors are rampant during negotiations, and it’s unfortunate that some media publish opinions instead of facts.”
Meanwhile, the ILWU claims that SSA Marine, a member of the Pacific Maritime Association, “circumvented the assignment of work” by having the National Labor Relations Board become involved and award the chilly ironing jobs to a different union, work that ought to have gone to their members based on contract phrases.
“We are shocked that SSA is taking such an action, and we are currently regrouping to determine how to proceed in negotiations while we watch an employer violate the very provision of the contract over which the parties were bargaining,” Williams mentioned.
A spokesperson for SSA declined to remark and referred all inquiries to the PMA, which didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Logistics corporations concern the most recent spherical of accusations will solely improve tensions for a provide chain and nationwide port infrastructure already dealing with a number of labor issues.
The Port of Los Angeles diverted 40,000 containers to the Port of Long Beach in August when dockworkers on the Port of LA refused to work on the automated part of APM Terminals, the biggest container-handling facility citing security issues. APM is part of A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S and the automation a part of the terminal has been working since 2020. Workers didn’t work at that facility for practically 4 weeks.
That diversion of containers to Long Beach, in addition to the continued re-routing of containers to the East Coast, led to the Port of New York to take the No. 1 spot in processing import and export containers in August. Port of Los Angeles fell to 3rd.
Undertaking44, which additionally collects and analyzes port productiveness for the CNBC Supply Chain Heat Map, has tracked some latest points at Seattle operations.
Container dwell instances on the Port of Oakland have been bettering over the month of September, based on Josh Brazil, vice chairman of provide chain insights at Undertaking44. Containers that used to dwell for eight or extra days are actually ready 4 to 5 days on common. But Seattle operations are experiencing heightened export dwell instances, at the moment at 11 days. That is up 83% from the earlier 6-day common firstly of the month. “The general outlook is that it seems to be business as usual in terms of dwell times, except for Seattle’s exports,” Brazil mentioned.
Export delays out of the Pacific Northwest are one problem that U.S. farm exporters have been experiencing. One U.S. logistics supervisor not too long ago informed CNBC they had been avoiding the Seattle/Tacoma Port by using the UP to Norfolk Southern rail route to the Port of Virginia the place their cargo was loaded on a Hapag Lloyd vessel.
The CNBC Supply Chain Heat Map knowledge suppliers are synthetic intelligence and predictive analytics firm Everstream Analytics; world freight reserving platform Freightos, creator of the Freightos Baltic Dry Index; logistics supplier OL USA; provide chain intelligence platform FreightWaves; provide chain platform Blume Global; third-party logistics supplier Orient Star Group; marine analytics agency MarineVisitors; maritime visibility knowledge firm Undertaking44; maritime transport knowledge firm MDS Transmodal UK; ocean and air freight charge benchmarking and market analytics platform Xeneta; main supplier of analysis and evaluation Sea-Intelligence ApS; Crane Worldwide Logistics; and air, DHL Global Forwarding; freight logistics supplier Seko Logistics; and Planet, supplier of worldwide, each day satellite tv for pc imagery and geospatial options.
