YAKIMA: While applauding the intent of Senate bills to keep U.S. ports functioning during labor disputes, Chris Schlect, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, questions if they will be sufficient.
The main bill, introduced June 5 by Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., would allow governors of states with seaports to use the Taft-Hartley Act to order workers back on the job. Currently, only the president can do that.
“I don’t know if the odds of having a California governor or any West Coast governor invoke the Taft-Hartley Act are any better than having the president invoke it,” said Schlect, noting the Democratic West Coast governors, like the president, are seen as being beholden to labor unions.
“I didn’t see a lot of outcry by West Coast governors this past winter,” Schlect said in reference to an 10-month longshore union work slowdown at West Coast ports that crippled exports and imports.
The Horticultural Council, in Yakima, represents tree fruit growers and shippers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho on national and international policy issues.
Losses of Washington apple exports from the slowdown were estimated at $95 million and losses of pear exports at nearly $12 million.
Beyond apples and pears, exports of hay, chilled beef and pork, frozen and dehydrated potato products, frozen vegetables, forest products, Christmas trees, citrus fruit, nuts, pulses, hides, dairy products and rice were all impacted. The Agriculture Transportation Coalition, which strongly supports the new bills, said billions of dollars in sales were lost and ag exporters lost customers to competitors from other countries.
The slowdown ended in February when an agreement was reached between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Pacific Maritime Association. It took a couple more months for ports to rebuild normal flows of shipping containers.
On May 12, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., introduced S 1298 to collect metrics of port marine terminal productivity for an early warning system to know when terminals are no longer operating normally.
Thune said South Dakota businesses and agricultural production had been hurt. He said the longshoremen slowdown at 29 West Coast ports cost the U.S. economy up to an estimated $2.5 billion per day and contributed to an anemic 0.2 percent annual growth rate in the first quarter of 2015.
Alexander said it was difficult for auto manufacturers in Tennessee to keep production lines running. In December, there was talk of placing longshoremen under the Labor Railway Act.
Schlect said he’s been told by the National Association of Manufacturers and National Retail Federation that it’s impossible to use the Labor Railway Act. He said he doesn’t know if that’s on legal or political grounds.
“Taft-Hartley may be the best we can do. Many must think it’s the only achievable solution,” he said. “The U.S. cannot afford another collapse of our gateway container ports,” said Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition.
West Coast ports have shut down twice in the past 13 years and could again when the new longshoremen contract expires in four years, he said. An East Coast longshore contract expires in three years.
If the federal government is not willing to prevent port disruptions, governors need to be able to do so, Friedmann said.The bills may pass the Senate and House but it’s hard to envision President Barack Obama signing them, Schlect said.
