SAN FRANCISCO —President Barack Obama is sending Labor Secretary Tom Perez to California to meet this weekend with shipowners and longshoremen involved in the labor dispute that threatens to shut down 29 West Coast ports, a White House adviser said Saturday.
As Obama prepared to leave San Francisco on Saturday morning, aides said he summoned Perez to get the parties together to talk. The Pacific Maritime Association and the union representing dockworkers met Friday without reaching a deal. It’s not clear when they’ll meet again.
The workers’ last contract expired in July and the two sides have been operating without one since. The dispute broke open in the fall when the shipping group accused union workers of slowing down on the job as a negotiating tactic.
Congestion at the ports has delayed shipments from Asia. Some businesses are rerouting goods by air or through ports on the East Coast, but those workarounds have been expensive. The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports account for about 40 percent of the nation’s incoming container cargo.
In 2013, the two ports handled roughly $400 billion worth of goods.
The San Pedro Bay facilities have experienced severe bottlenecks since September, as workers contend with ever-larger container vessels and a shortage of trailers that truckers use to haul goods from the ports.
The two sides have been negotiating for nine months. Tentative agreements on health care benefits and the union’s role in maintaining truck trailers have been reached. But employers say a major hurdle is rules governing the removal of arbitrators, who settle disputes on the docks when a labor contract is in place.
Obama still thinks the problems need to be solved at the bargaining table without intervention from the federal government.
But he thinks Perez may be able to help the parties find common ground and dispatched him “out of concern for the economic consequences of further delay,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Saturday. Perez is traveling to California to meet with the sides “to urge them to resolve their dispute quickly at the bargaining table,” he said.
