Cargo operations at the region's ports resumed over the
weekend, as the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor said it was opening an
investigation into who orchestrated what it called an illegal walkout on
Friday.
Port officials expect a normal workday today, after
dockworkers walked off the job without warning on Friday, shutting down the
busiest waterfront on the East Coast.
The longshoremen came back Friday night and worked over
the weekend, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey, which serves as the landlord for the New York Harbor terminal
areas in the two states.
"They worked ships Friday night and yesterday,"
said Coleman.
While many of the terminals handling cargo from the ships
that call on Port Newark and the other terminals in the region are typically
closed to truckers on the weekend, there were some operations on Saturday and
Sunday. Coleman said Global Container Terminal in Bayonne put in extra hours in
advance of the walkout to make up for the snow days, and was open Sunday with
no problems.
"We expect a normal day tomorrow and will have
normal Port Authority Police Department staffing at the terminals to assist
with traffic control, which is typically an issue in the morning," he
said.
The move, which quickly led to huge truck backlogs,
caught port officials, terminal operators and even union executives unaware.
Meanwhile, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor,
which can lift a dockworker's license to work for any number of rules
violations, said it has opened a probe into what sparked the sudden day-long
labor action, and who may have been responsible.
"We have begun an investigation as to who ordered
the illegal walkout and why," said Walter Arsenault, the commission's
executive director. "We expect normal operations in the port tomorrow.
Commission detectives will be in the port as they always are."
The New York Shipping Association, which represents the
terminal operators, ocean carriers, and stevedores, said Monday should be a
normal day.
"The next step is obviously to sit down and try and
resolve the outstanding points," said NYSA spokeswoman Beverly Fedorko.
"We can't get into the specific details of the discussions, but they all
have to do with work preservation."
A union spokesman did not respond to requests for comment
on Sunday. Some 4,000 union members work at the port.
The dockworkers, who walked off the job at about 10 a.m
on Friday, returned that evening after an arbitrator issued a finding that the
work stoppage represented a contract violation, leading the International
Longshoremen's Association to urge its members to return to "accept orders
and return to work immediately."
4 ex0129longshormen SciarrinoCargo cranes stand idle at
the Maher Terminal in Elizabeth after longshoremen unexpectedly walked off the
job Friday, shutting down the port terminals both in New Jersey and New York.
(Robert Sciarrino | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
It is still unclear exactly what precipitated the
walkout, which caught just about everyone at the port by surprise. The NYSA has
an existing collective bargaining agreement with the ILA and had not been
negotiating with the powerful union.
Union leaders said publicly they too had been caught
unawares that their members had been planning to walk off the job, but cited
growing anger by dockworkers over what they see as a growing "intrusion
into their livelihoods" by waterfront commission, which licenses
longshoremen.
Both the union and the shipping association have
frequently chafed at the commission's regulations, which both say has held up
hiring and threatens a labor shortage. Last year, the New Jersey Legislature
moved to pull the state out of the commission, which had also come under attack
for internal abuses by the New York Inspector General in 2009 that led to an
overhaul of the agency. Gov. Chris Christie, however vetoed the measure.
The bi-state commission, created more than 60 years ago,
is tasked with keeping out corruption and mob control on the docks, and has
been involved in a number of criminal actions in recent years charging union
members in a mob-tied shakedown of other workers.
Economic impact
Any long-term work stoppage at the sprawling port of New
York Harbor potentially could cause billions in economic losses.
Much of what comes into the port follows a tight
logistics schedule so that things do not sit in warehouses for any length of
time, noted Richard Barone, vice president for transportation at the Regional Plan
Association, which examines transportation, environmental and economic
development issues in the Northeast.
"There isn't much leeway when there is a stoppage
like this," he said. "It could be very serious."
He pointed to the 2004 strike by dockworkers at Port of
Los Angeles and Long Beach, shutting down the port for an entire week. Barone
said the Congressional Budget Office later estimated the economic losses at
$150 million per day. More recently, a protracted labor dispute last year again
jammed ship traffic at ports along the West Coast, affecting not only imports
coming into the United States, but tons of fresh fruits and vegetables bound
for Asian markets.
At the same time, Barone said about 80 percent of the
goods that come into the New York area ports stay in the metropolitan area.
"They feed us, clothe us, and are used in our daily lives," he said.
Kurt Krummenacker, vice president and senior credit
officer for Moody's Investors Service, said the terminal operators would bear
most of the risk of any long-term strike.
"We are continuing to monitor the situation and
identify the underlying labor issues," he said.
Source: NJ.com
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