U.S. port strike pushes up freight rates with ships held up offshore

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Reuters

BY HENNING GLOYSTEIN

A U.S. West Coast port strike is pushing up shipping freight rates as delays in offloading and taking on new cargo mean container ships are unavailable for new orders.

Dozens of container ships are lying in wait off the large U.S. West Coast ports of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. Many of them have been waiting more than a week to enter port to unload or take on new cargoes, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data.

"The strike is affecting a lot of vessels. There's a lot of delays and this is pushing up panamax (container) rates as fewer ships are available for new orders," a leading Singapore-based broker said.

The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index for U.S. West Coast (USWC) rates rose 23 points last week to 2,265 and brokers said quotes had risen a further five points on Monday.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/us-usa-ports-west-asia-idUSKBN0LK0A420150216

[LittleGirl]

1. You know

it's not always about retail goods with this story. We have our vehicles stuck in the Port of LA waiting for nearly 2 months now to get them on a boat. ugh! We just want our vehicles.

[William Seger]

4. It takes two to Tango

Which side do you think should be the dipper and which the dipee?

[turbinetree]

2. Strike

I support the Long shore men and woman and what may be playing out is that they (oligarchy) will move this to some other port and have scabs doing it, just think if the TPP was in place

[sulphurdunn]

3. First of all, there is no fucking strike.

It is essentially a lock out, with the corporate press pimping for the PMA against the ILWU as usual. It's always from the same playbook: "Greedy unionized dock workers shut down ports, cost consumers billions of dollars, while the poor and powerless shipping magnates try to reason with them." Over the years it has become more sophisticated. Crude attacks on labor have been replaced with vague, false equivalency arguments, but the meme is the same. Here's the other side. The one that won't ever be reported by Reuters.

http://www.ilwu.org/ilwu-president-blasts-pma-threat-to-shut-down-us-ports/

http://www.ilwu.org/aerial-photos-of-ports-show-what-the-pma-doesnt-want-the-public-to-see/

http://www.ilwu.org/longshore-caucus-meets-to-review-status-of-contract-talks/

[socialist_n_TN]

9. Thank you. I was wondering if i had missed something overnight......

THERE IS NO STRIKE! This is a "slowdown" and both sides are blaming the other one as the reason for the slowdown. Of course the management blame goes to those greedy dock workers who are "working to the rule". Working to the rule of an EXPIRED CONTRACT, BTW.

Isn't it funny how contracts are sacred when they affect management profits, but are "negotiable" at any time when it comes to the workers and what they contracted for.

[OilBurnerBob]

5. It isn't a strike!!!

This entire situation has been brought about by mismanagement by the PMA.

All those ships lying at anchor outside the ports... they aren't going to unload themselves. The ILWU will have to do it so this tactic by the PMA is pointless.

[outside]

6. Punta Colonet, Baja Mexico.

A Los Angeles firm, representing Chinese and Korean concerns, was lobbying the Mexican government to be granted permission to build the multibillion dollar port in the agricultural area of Punta Colonet, 150 miles (240 km) south of Tijuana, to handle between 1.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) and 6 million TEU of cargo.

Their plan is to build 18 berths at the port capable of processing 850,000 TEU of containerized cargo annually. The consortium also planned to combine the project with an air-freight airport north of Ensenada. It was reported that instead of running a rail line 180 miles (290 km) across the Baja California peninsula to and then connect the state capital Mexicali and Yuma, Arizona, as the federal plan envisioned, the defunct consortium of HPH/UP ostensibly would have built a line to Ciudad Juárez in the state of Chihuahua where rail crossings into the United States already exist. But certainly any such rail line necessarily would run through or near Mexicali, the capital city of the state of Baja California for any tie-in with the US transcontinental rail system.=snip=

This port in Baja has been on and off for years.

[sulphurdunn]

11. The long game has for years

been to break the ILWU through bypassing West Coast ports for Mexico and then shipping the cargo by rail and truck into the US. It isn't exactly rocket science, but it is expensive and the shippers want governments to pay for it, so it hasn't progressed as fast as they would like. Creating chaos on West Coast docks and calling in the Feds furthers their strategy.

[Fred Sanders]

7. "Shipping Corporations Price Gouging During Port Strike" | Not Reuters

[Sunlei]

8. The press releases sent to media are lies. “PMA is leaving ships at sea and claiming there’s no spa

“PMA is leaving ships at sea and claiming there’s no space on the docks, but there are acres of asphalt just waiting for the containers on those ships, and hundreds of longshore workers ready to unload them,” said McEllrath. “The employers are deliberately worsening the existing congestion crisis to gain the upper hand at the bargaining table.”

[socialist_n_TN]

10. As a couple of posters have said above: THERE IS NO STRIKE..........

but quite frankly, there should be. The ILWU has been working under an expired contract for about seven and a half months now and the Pacific Maritime Association (the owners' representative organization) has been intransigent in it's demands, mostly about curbing the power of the ILWU. It's time to up the pressure on capitalism and shut it down.

It would make a nice bookend to the USW strike against Big Oil. There are also contract drivers who move the cargo out of the ports who are struggling to organize that could probably be brought into any work stoppage. In addition, there's a healthy contingent of radical and even revolutionary supporters of labor in the areas that would be affected by a strike that are ready, willing, and able to support. It's time.