West Coast ports back to normal activity

May Day work stoppage at 29 West Coast ports lasts one work shift.

By Dave Hannon -- Purchasing, 5/2/2008 9:55:00 AM

After a one-shift, 10-hour strike, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union reportedly went back to work last night at the 29 ports up and down the West Coast.

"Everything is back to normal. Assignments are being dispatched," Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, told the Associated Press Thursday evening.

Yesterday, as reported on Purchasing.com, members of the ILWU stayed away from work, bringing freight imports to a standstill for an entire day. A typical Thursday brings in more than 10,000 containers at the 29 West Coast ports involved, according to the Pacific Maritime Association. The union said the work stoppage was a war protest, but the Pacific Maritime Association said it was a negotiating tactic in advance of the union’s upcoming contract talks with the PMA.

“Today's action is not about leveraging negotiations at all,”  said William Silva, president of ILWU Local 29 in San Diego told the San Diego Union Tribune.

The ILWU had warned the PMA and other entities that they would take May 1 as a protest day and many shippers were prepared for the stoppage. But Port of Long Beach Spokesman Art Wong told the Long Beach Press Telegram that “The worst part of it seems to be for the truckers. They came down here this morning not knowing what to expect and now most of them are just sitting around waiting."

The AP reports that trucker James Laudermill spent yesterday morning washing his truck and fueling up on diesel at a truck wash in the Los Angeles suburb of Wilmington after he was turned away at the nearby Port of Long Beach. "I was trying to pick up a load this morning, and I was at the speaker and suddenly security came out and run us all out," he said, adding he would lose about $400 because of the walkout.

The stoppage cost Dole Fresh Fruit Co. more than $300,000, according to the San Diego Union Tribune.

A 10-day West Coast port strike in 2002 cost the nation's economy an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion a day