Striking port clerks in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, returned to work on Wednesday after a crippling eight-day strike hobbled one of the biggest and busiest container port complexes in the United States, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek report. The strike idled 10 of the 14 terminals at the port, and freighters with no place to unload their cargo lined up at anchorages off the port. Twenty other freighters took their cargo to other ports in northern California, Mexico, and Panama, while some simply did not sail from their home ports. Clerical workers walked out November 27 and some 10,000 longshoremen and other union members refused to cross picket lines, forcing the shutdown.
The California port complex handles 44 percent of all container traffic that arrives in the United States by sea. The overall economic impact of the strike has been estimated to be more than $1 billion a day, including the value of cargo rerouted by shippers and lost wages for dock workers, truckers, and others idled by the walk out. About 316,000 jobs in the region, or about 1 in 20 are tied to the harbor, according to the Port of Long Beach. The deal reached Tuesday evening must be ratified by union membership. Such ratification is expected to occur within the next couple of weeks.
The 800-member clerical-workers unit at the California ports represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union won modest increases in wage and pension benefits over the life of a new four-year contract. But the larger issue to the striking clerks was assurances from management that, as workers retire or leave the ports during the next four years, no more than 14 jobs will be outsourced. Shippers denied outsourcing job and fought against the job guarantees, maintaining they would be forced to keep people on the payroll that were not needed. This issue will most likely be the center of negotiations again when the new contract expires in 2016.
The clerks handle such tasks as filing invoices and billing notices, arranging dock visits by customs inspectors, and ensuring that cargo moves off the dock quickly and gets to its correct destination. The computerization of such tasks can allow for the responsibilities to be performed far from the cargo docks and the ocean. “These are fairly complicated jobs, you can’t just hire anybody to do them, but nevertheless they can be done from other places,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The clerks make average salaries of $41 an hour, or about $87,000 a year. with overtime and generous benefits, they receive average annual compensation of $165,000 that will rise to about $195,000 if the proposed contract is ratified. They also receive pensions and 11 weeks of time off and their health insurance is fully paid.
Gates have reopened at the ports and workers are busy unloading cargo, but “it’s going to take a few days, maybe a week or two to get back to normal,” said Long Beach port spokesman Art Wong.
