ASSOCIATED PRESS A cargo ship was unloaded earlier this month at Port of Oakland, Calif. The West Coast dockworkers' union yesterday said shippers are purposely mismanaging cargo movement in order to blame the union for a work slowdown.

Union blames shippers
for slow ports

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By Justin Pritchard
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO >> Shipping companies purposely are mismanaging cargo movement at major Pacific ports so Justice Department lawyers will be able to tag longshoremen with charges of a work slowdown, according to documents the dockworker's union filed yesterday with federal officials.

The filing came amid hints that federal prosecutors fault longshoremen for the continued backlog at West Coast ports, not the shipping companies that initiated a 10-day lockout that ended earlier this month.

The 10,500-member union and the association of shipping companies have blamed each other for the trouble in clearing the docks because culpability matters. Under the Taft-Hartley injunction that reopened the 29 major ports, a federal judge may decide whether either side is violating a directive to work "at a normal pace."

ASSOCIATED PRESS A crane moved containers in a storage yard at the Port of Portland earlier this month. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union refuted shipping companies' charges its members were slowing work on the docks.

Yesterday, lawyers for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union wrote that the shipping lines association is violating the court order "through its refusal to work with the union to jointly address the tremendous logistical problems caused by the lockout."

Last week, the Pacific Maritime Association -- which represents shipping companies -- furnished documents to federal prosecutors asserting some crane operators were moving up to 30 percent fewer cargo containers than normal.

A union spokesman said yesterday those statistics didn't prove a slowdown -- instead, they proved that the waterfront is in disarray because of mismanagement.

"If a particular container is needed to be put on a ship and that one is stuck somewhere in a pile, it will hold up everything," union spokesman Steve Stallone said. "That leaves the crane sitting idle for a while."

Shipping association officials said it was ridiculous to suggest they were sabotaging operations.

"You can't have more motivation than we do to get things working properly. Our members are losing millions of dollars," association spokesman Steve Sugerman said. "It's a somewhat outrageous argument to say we are doing anything but trying to operate the most productive ports."

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Pacific Maritime Association

International Longshore and Warehouse Union