ASSOCIATED PRESS
The R.J. Pfeiffer, a Matson container ship, pulled into Honolulu Harbor yesterday. The ship left the West Coast before the docks shut down in a labor dispute. The Pfeiffer will be the last to dock in Hawaii until the dispute is resolved.
Plant closures coming, LOS ANGELES - Even if the West Coast dock lockout ends soon, many U.S. factories may have to shut down anyway because the parts they need will be caught in a huge backlog of cargo, business leaders said Friday.
even if ports open,
business leaders say
Produce prices expected to jump
By SIMON AVERY
Associated Press
"It's a foregone conclusion that assembly lines are going to close down," said Robin Lanier, executive director of the West Coast Waterfront Coalition, which represents retailers and transportation companies that rely on the ports.
Even if President Bush immediately invokes the Taft-Hartley Act and declares an 80-day cooling-off period, manufacturers will not be able to avoid interruptions on their assembly lines, she said.
"The challenge is going to be the chaos and bedlam on the water as they try to pull things out," said Michael Damer, spokesman for New United Motor Manufacturing near the port of Oakland, which has been idle since Wednesday, halting the assembly of Toyota and Pontiac cars and trucks.
Household names in American manufacturing may run out of parts and be forced to shut down their assembly lines in the next few days, said Darren McKinney, spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers.
"They are running up against the wall very quickly," he said.
Nissan and Boeing were among the companies feeling the pinch from the shutdown that began Sunday at the nation's 29 West Coast ports in Washington, Oregon and California. The shutdown is costing the U.S. economy an estimated $2 billion a day.
Almost 200 ships laden with Asian cargo were left waiting along the coast, cutting off supplies for manufactures and retailers awaiting holiday goods.
Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad, had 55 trains parked across the western United States, unable to move cargo. Grain shipments bound for export were sitting in warehouses and growers of perishable goods like apples and citrus worried that their harvests will not reach lucrative Asian markets.
On Friday, dockworkers and management met for a second day with a federal mediator in an effort to reach a new contract. The only development made public was an agreement to allow six workers in Oakland and Concord to move some military cargo on the docks Saturday.
Business groups pushed for government intervention and met Friday with officials at the White House. The meat and poultry industry, which ships more than $5 billion worth of products to Asia each year, called on Bush to use his authority to end the labor disruption.
Late Friday, an administration official said the White House position remained unchanged, with Bush closely monitoring the situation and urging both sides to work with federal mediators.
Meanwhile, the governors of California, Oregon and Washington joined a long list of politicians urging the parties to reach an agreement swiftly.
The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping companies and terminal operators, locked out 10,500 members of the longshoremen's union, claiming the dockworkers had engaged in a slowdown. The main issue is whether jobs created by new technology will be unionized.
The PMA did agree to hire longshoremen to load Alaska-bound cargo ships at the Port of Tacoma, an exception in its weeklong lockout.
On Friday, longshoremen were loading ships operated by Totem Ocean Trailer Express and CSX Lines with groceries, household goods and other products. The two sides agreed to the exception because of Alaska's dependence on cargo from the port.
The lockout remained in effect for all other nonmilitary ships, the PMA said.
Industries most at risk of supply problems during the lockout are automotive, clothing, toy manufacturing, food and agriculture, and electronics.
Nissan North America said it plans to eliminate the Saturday shift at its Smyrna, Tenn., plant that manufactures nearly 500,000 Altimas, Xterra SUVs and Frontier pickups a year.
"We can probably make it to the end of next week, but beyond that we'd probably have to shut the plant down," spokesman Scott Vasin said.
Boeing Co., the world's largest commercial airplane manufacturer, could also see its production pinched as soon as next week.
With fuselage parts sitting in container ships waiting to be unloaded at the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, the company will have to build the jets "out of sequence" from the normal process, adding to costs and delaying production, said Boeing spokesman Peter Conte.
Meanwhile, air cargo rates have climbed by as much as 30 percent since Sunday, as the lockout coincides with the seasonal increase in shipments, placing a premium on available capacity.
Pacific Maritime Association
International Longshore and Warehouse Union
