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Dockworkers Say Port  Reprint permission
The freight transportation industry continues to ignore a capacity crunch in Southern California that could quickly paralyze the country's supply chain, according to West Coast dockworkers. "The backlog of ships at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting to unload are at a critical stage, while (infrastructure) on the connecting highways and railroads are not sufficient to handle the freight coming in," said International Longshore and Warehouse Union president James Spinosa at a news conference on Oct. 20. "It's a consequence of poor planning and poor investment. The biggest concern is that port stakeholders seem to be fragmented and are not pulling together to move a new wave of cargo coming to the West Coast." Spinosa, whose members work for terminal operators represented by the Pacific Maritime Association, said the PMA's lax hiring procedures led to an inadequate workforce incapable of unloading the flood of cargo flowing in from Asia. Shortsighted hiring practices in the rail industry have exacerbated the congestion problem at the rail terminals, he said. Spinosa recommended several short-term solutions, including increasing the number of workers within container gangs, 24-hour gate systems that would allow empty containers and loads to be dropped off and picked up at the same time, a prioritized gate system that would allow freight to be picked up by appointment and creating on-site and off-site staging areas to make better use of space inside the terminal gates. "Clearly there's a cost attached to these things, and who's going to pay is the $64,000 question," Spinosa said. "But that argument has to be settled now. We can't continue to fight about how costs are going to be distributed among the stakeholders. There's not enough deepwater ports to handle all the volume."
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