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Busiest U.S. port sees file quantity earlier than high-stakes labor talks

Financial system3 hours ago (Apr 12, 2022 05: 40PM ET)

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Stacked containers are shown as ships dump their cargo at the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake

By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Port of Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest, on Tuesday reported file first-quarter quantity as anguish builds earlier than the July 1 expiration of the labor contract covering some 22,000 West Fly dock workers.

The Port of Los Angeles handles about 40% of U.S. container cargo and is house to extra union workers than any of the 29 Pacific Fly ports.

An deadlock within the West Fly talks threatens to undo growth at the Port of Los Angeles. With out reference to a persisted flood of imports, workers there are whittling down pandemic-fueled cargo pileups that contributed to inventory shortages, helped pressure up particular person costs, and derive change into the surrounding bay into a parking space.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) and tons of groups that count on West Fly ports like Los Angeles are pressuring the dockworkers’ union and employers to rapid hammer out an settlement to handbook clear of extra distress to the enviornment’s battered supply chains.

The World Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents West Fly dockworkers, and the Pacific Maritime Affiliation (PMA), representing employers, are scheduled to kick off talks on May perhaps moreover 12 in San Francisco.

Such labor talks are historically fraught. The final round of negotiations in 2014-2015 resulted in an eight-day work stoppage that sapped an estimated $8 billion from the Southern California economic system. Provider did no longer enhance for roughly nine months.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles port Govt Director Gene Seroka talked about increased staffing helped gash vessel backups by speeding up cargo circulation – even as first-quarter volumes climbed 3.5% to an all-time high of two.68 million 20-foot the same objects (TEU).

Meanwhile, bottlenecks are constructing at Asian ports as outbreaks of a highly contagious Omicron variant disrupt the free traipse of change and threaten to unleash a new wave of world supply chain shocks.

“We’re mild facing a world supply chain crisis … we absolutely hope (the West Fly labor negotiation) doesn’t extra complicate that ongoing crisis,” Jonathan Gold, vp supply chain and customs protection at NRF, informed Reuters.

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