PORT OF LOS ANGELES: Labor secretary Thomas E. Perez joined the mayors of Los Angeles and Long Beach Monday on board the deck of the USS Iowa to praise an agreement aimed at reducing port congestion — and heralded new construction designed to help even more.
“We have a tremendous set of opportunities here. Los Angeles and Long Beach are indeed the gateway to, really, the future of trade in America,” Perez said during a media conference that was essentially a ceremonial event for an agreement that was achieved earlier this year.
Port congestion has been a complicated problem around the ports that goes beyond the slowdowns that accompanied the bitter final weeks of the most recent round of labor negotiations between longshore workers and their employers. One of the issues affecting Southern California ports is the marine industry’s move to bigger and bigger ships, and a new construction contract at Port of Los Angeles is intended to address that problem.
In a newer development for the harbor, the Port of Los Angeles announced Monday that a two-year construction project to improve the 185-acre Yusen Terminals Inc., facility is scheduled to begin this summer.
The Los Angeles Harbor Commission has awarded a $44.6 million contract to Manson Construction Co. for berth improvements and other work, according to Los Angeles port officials.
In all, Port of Los Angeles officials expect to spend upward of $67 million on the project. That figure includes planned expenditures for an on-dock rail project that is expected to be awarded to a contractor next year. Some $8 million come from Proposition 1B bonds, and Yusen may invest an additional $60 million in the work, according to the Port of Los Angeles.
The scope of the Yusen Terminals project includes deepening the harbor alongside several berths, the installation of up to four new gantry cranes and the raising of other cranes to handle large ships. New electrical infrastructure would provide shore-to-ship power connections. A new rail line at the terminal is planned as well.
“This project consists of strategic improvements to make Yusen a more agile terminal and strengthen our competitive edge,” said Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said in a statement.
Although the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are considered to be competitors for the shipping firms’ business, the recent agreement that was commemorated Monday at the historic battleship makes it possible for port officials to form working groups of industry experts assigned to examining such issues as the challenges of moving cargo in peak seasons and making sure port truckers have access to the chassis needed to haul shipping containers to and from the harbor.
“We still intend to vigorously compete with each other, don’t worry,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said during the media conference. “To all our customers, we know you like that.”
The twin ports announced plans to form those and additional experts’ groups this past May.
The Federal Maritime Commission approved the cooperative agreement in late February, shortly after longshore workers and their employers at West Coast terminals announced a deal to end protracted collective bargaining talks.
Before the deal was reached, dozens of cargo ships were stuck outside the harbor waiting for berths to open. People on both sides of the labor negotiations accused each other of slowdown tactics during the final weeks of talks.
Following Monday’s media conference at the Iowa, Port of Long Beach Executive Director Jon Slangerup said that although the agreement between the ports wouldn’t directly give port administrators a means to direct future labor talks, he is optimistic that including labor representative in experts’ groups with other industry figures will improve labor relations at the harbor.
The agreement between the ports is the first of its kind in the United States, said Slangerup, who said the bad publicity achieved during the worst of the port slowdown seems to have created an incentive to solve problems around the harbor. “This breakdown that occurred last year put us on the national stage,” he said.
