Facing up to congestion factors on the US West Coast

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محتوى الصفحة: Home > مجلة النقل الدولي "Transport International" > Issue 19 April 2005 > Container congestion > Congestion Factors on the US West Coast

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By Steve Stallone

The recent port congestion on the US West Coast is the consequence of several infrastructure and planning problems that converged last summer to create a logjam, sending ripples through the international shipping industry. Whether this wake-up call was enough to get those in charge to deal with the underlying causes remains to be seen.

First, in an effort to shed some of its workforce, the railroads offered workers incentives to retire early. More of them took the deal than management planned for. Shortages of skilled labor as well as shortages in locomotives and rail cars left the railroads unable to handle the peak season cargo levels. The railroads began restricting the amount of containers they would take from each of the terminals at the large Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex.

Domino effects

That in turn led to containers stacking up on the docks. Terminal operators were forced to shift from wheeled operations (containers on chassis ready to move out) to grounded or stacked operations. So more heavy equipment operators—six times as many—were required to dig through the stacks of containers when trains and trucks could take them off. This quickly depleted the number of skilled heavy equipment operators available, leading to shortages of gangs to work all the many ships coming in and creating the backlog in the harbor.

Making matters worse, the congestion from all the stacked containers and all the heavy equipment made the dock work all the slower. And the fact that terminal operators only kept the truck gates open during the first (day) shift meant there was only a small window to move out containers that weren’t using the railroads.

The employers claimed they did not foresee the crush of cargo coming their way—a seemingly disingenuous excuse considering industry analysts have been predicting double digit percentage increases every year for many years now. And the employers have been distancing themselves from union proposals to solve these problems for the last few years, claiming the union only wants to increase its own work and workforce. But circumstances have forced them to embrace some of those ideas now.

Wake up call

Although the Southern California ILWU local asked in February 2004 for large increases in hiring, the employers waited until August—until the congestion was an international disgrace—before agreeing to a new hiring plan. Now they are talking about more hiring before 2005’s peak season.

The ILWU has for years been pushing to keep the truck gates open at least through the night shift if not 24 hours a day. Now the employers are talking about setting up such a system by this spring.

The union is also proposing the establishment of staging areas near the gates to facilitate moving cargo and to reduce congestion by keeping trucks off the docks.
The employers have not yet embraced this idea, but the 2005 peak season may leave them little choice since larger infrastructure projects like better surface roads, increased rail lines and more container yard acreage, are unlikely to be ready in the next few months.

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Steve Stallone is communications director of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and editor of its journal The Dispatcher. He is based in California, US.

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Issue 19 April 2005

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