US West Coast ports reopened Wednesday night after a lockout of union workers that left fresh produce rotting on the docks, holiday merchandise unloaded on ships and caused carmakers to halt production.
Honda Motor Co said it will suspend production at two US plants and one Canadian plant today because of a shortage of parts. Paramount Export Co in Oakland, California, said containers holding 108 tonnes of fruits and vegetables bound for Asia and South America may have spoiled, resulting in a US$120,000 loss.
"We're scrambling to figure out where we might ship to first," said Paramount Export President Nick Kukulan, who added he ships about US$100 million of perishables, such as peaches, pears, plums and vege-tables annually. "Everybody's madly trying to figure out which ships are going to where and when they'll arrive at their destination."
Union members returned to work at 6pm local time Wednesday night at the ports of California, Oregon and Washington, ending a lockout that began Sept. 29. US President George W. Bush used the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to reopen the ports, saying that the lockout was costing the economy as much as US$1 billion a day. The 29 ports handle about US$300 billion in cargo annually.
It may take eight to nine weeks to work through the backlog of cargo sitting on the docks and on board ships, said Joe Miniace, chief executive of the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents ocean carriers and terminal operators. The union has said it will be impossible to fill all the requests for labor it expects from the carriers group in the coming days.
In Oakland, the third-largest West Coast port, the union was able to supply only 180 of the 431 workers the carriers group had asked for last night, Richard Mead, president of Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, told reporters. The carriers have ordered 512 workers for tomorrow and the union has only been able to supply 310 of these positions, he said.
Steve Sugerman, a spokesman for the carriers association, was unable to confirm whether the union failed to provide requested labor in other ports.
"We are going to work according to the court ruling," union spokesman Steve Stallone said. "The court order directed us to work according to the contract. The docks are incredibly congested. There is no way in hell we can work as fast as we did before."
District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered the ports reopened through Wednesday. The court will hear a government request for an 80-day cooling-off period under the Taft-Hartley Act next week.
The union said it may keep adhering to safety rules, a practice carriers call a work slowdown that prompted the lockout.
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