Ports suffer labour pains

摘要

The focus of container carriers and their customers in North America over the last 12 months has been entirely on port performance, the chaos into which container supply chains descended during the early part of 2015 and the subsequent attempts to clear the back-log. Trouble began to be evident in the last quarter of last year when it became clear that congestion was beginning to build up in ports from Los Angeles all the way north to Seattle. At the same time the negotiations over a new master employment contract between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the body that represents stevedores in both the US and Canada, and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), representing terminal operators in the region, began to show the first signs of acrimony. The original contract expired in mid 2014, but various extensions were agreed and a spirit of co-operation appeared to prevail with a series of joint statements that confirmed that the old agreement remained in place while talks continued. But that sense of accord gradually began to disintegrate and by the turn of the year it was clear that there were substantial differences between the two sides.