Posted on 10/06/2002 9:11:56 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
FRESNO, California - A weeklong shutdown of the West Coast’s major ports has left stacks of market-bound farm produce to rot on the docks and in the holds of ships that can’t reach shore.
As contract talks continued between the dockworkers union and shipping lines Saturday, about 1.3 billion apples were awaiting shipment to Asia, nearly 8,000 tons of frozen meat from Australia sat in untouched shipping containers, and hundreds of tons of other fruit and food products remained far from intended markets.
About 5 million pounds of yellow, red, pearl and other onions grown in the Northwest are in danger of becoming moldy, said Del Allen, president of Allports Forwarding, a cargo booking business for farm products.
Each day it continues, the shutdown is costing the US economy an estimated $2 billion, and for many farmers, it comes at the worst possible time - the peak of the fall harvest.
“By not having product being shipped to customers, you’re also not receiving money,” said John Rotteveel, who grows and packs almonds in Dixon, California, and exports about 90 percent of his crop.
On Saturday, as representatives of dockworkers and management began their third consecutive day of meetings with a federal mediator in San Francisco, the White House warned both sides to resolve their differences.
“The President’s message to labor and management is simple: You are hurting the economy,” press secretary Ari Fleischer said while traveling with President Bush in New Hampshire.
Two senior administration officials said Bush was considering appointing a board of inquiry into the lockout, a potential first step toward ordering workers back to their jobs for 80 days under the Taft-Hartley Act. Shippers have urged Bush to use the act, but several unions have spoken out against it.
The contract dispute between shipping lines and dockworkers - largely over benefits, the arbitration process and whether jobs created by new technology will be unionized - has sent ripples through nation’s agriculture industry, causing slowdowns of the harvest, and in some cases, layoffs.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway stopped grain shipments to the West Coast on Tuesday to avoid further congestion at the ports, said Patrick Hiatte, the railway’s spokesman.
At sea, much of the chilled beef, lamb and mutton held up on ships could spoil before it reaches consumers, said Dennis Carl, chairman of the Australian Meat Council’s shipping committee.
Though most products can be safely refrigerated, storage problems and costs are mounting.
The D.J. Forry Co. spent $7,200 to bring 1,360 crates of plums from the Port of Long Beach to its warehouse in Reedley, California, and will spend $5,000 more to truck them to East Coast docks before a much longer voyage to Asia.
Sales manager Cary Crum said D.J. Forry also is bringing grapes back from the port and plans to truck them to New Jersey for shipment to the United Kingdom. The company will have to absorb the extra shipping costs, rather than sell the plums and grapes domestically, because they’re already packaged for overseas markets.
Other producers are redirecting food to American supermarkets, which could mean lower prices, said Colin Carter, a professor of agricultural resource economics who studies international trade at the University of California, Davis.
Wholesale prices are already dropping for beef, said Chuck Lambert, chief economist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
Because of a fraction of a percent of CEO's have proven to be corrupt, you've turned your back on your free market allegience to managers over unions?
You're too emotional to be a conservative...wear your brown shirt proudly commie.
My mind was changed in 1993 when my company tasked me to train and mentor 4 new Asian workers who could barely comprehend English. Six months later, 4 hard-working Americans lost their jobs.
Those out there (whose jobs are not so vulnerable) who would support my employer's decision with comments like : "It's his business" ... "this is capitalism" would likely not favor the drive to unionize. But if the employers are able to look out for their own best interests, why shouldn't workers unionize in their own best interest? Why can managers be "self-interested," while their employees are exhorted to "act in the interest of the economy, the country," etc?
Stravation as a weapon...Economic starvation as a weapon...what's the difference? Already, they are talking about shutting down the Nissan assembly plants in Tennessee if something isn't done by the end of next week...
Totally unrelated.
It has been decades since any farm bill has had anything to do with actual food production.
Not that I'm particularly pro-union, but it's management that's yanking the chain here. The Pacific Maritime Association is not anyone's friend. They're counting on the rest of the country to bail them out of a situation of their own devising. It's worked for other industries, hasn't it?
Are you a troll?
As someone who lives in Puget Sound, I would point out that you and I pay for the San Francisco Economic Bubble.
If you pay these guys $120,000 per year to do what is basically relatively unskilled labor, you and I pick up the cost at the Safeway checkout line.
If the rest of the country refuses to play the California Bay Area Economic Bubble Game, the San Francisco Real Estate Bubble will collapse as over-priced San Francisco real estate remains unsold.
It is not the responsibility of the rest of America to make it possible for San Franciscans to charge each other half a million dollars for a house and fifteen dollars for a cup of coffee with steamed milk in it.
If dockworkers can't afford to buy a $400,000 San Farncisco house, they are free to leave San Francisco, find a more affordable place to work and let San Francisco die as a port.
Puget Sound has lot's of very affordable housing within a reasonable communte of the Port of Seattle. Of course, these guys want $120,000 per year to unload ships here too.
"From each, according to ability; to each, according to need." --Karl Marx
In other words, big pay for bad work.
It also means cheaper food for us, raising our standard of living, and better wages for them, improving their standard of living. Win-win, to the little guy. I like cheap grapes from Chile. The farmer there likes my American bucks. The only loser here is Marx.
My little town used to be a major Puget Sound Port of Entry.......back in 1889.
What do you say we pool our financial resources together and get this town back into the longshoreman business. People in this town would kiss your feet for a $60,000 a year job. Since that is half of what Union longshoremen make, think how much money you and I can make as owners if we undercut the Union docks by 20%.
I've got it all planned out.
I'll handle all the paper work at an "undisclosed secret location" and you can handle the interactions with all the Union toughs that show up at our docks with brass knuckles and lead pipes. :-)
What you haven't figured out is that the Ebbers, Winnigs, McAuliffes, Clintons, Rubins and Sweeneys are on the same team. The problem with your reasoning/emoting is that they never represented free markets/capitalismm in the first place. Capitalism is so effective that in spite of their communist infiltration our nation is still a "first world" nation.
I'm truly sorry if you've been screwed by globalist communists, but throwing in with the union communists will only make it harder for us capitalists to preserve our standard of living.
If I told you, I'd have to kill you. :-)
can it handle container cargo?
With some dredging. Let's just say that I have taken great photos of the USS Nimitz at anchor with a 50 mm lens while standing in my own back yard.
My grandpa was a tough longshoreman type in brooklyn. had mob connections. we'll see if i handle the heat. wed have to become democrats i think. :-)
Told you I had it all figured out. :-)
Think of floating barges that have railcars on top. Then you dont even need a deepwater port... hmmm. :-)
The waterfront still has a railroad bridge that goes out to a mooring. Back in the old days, ships would dock at the mooring and the railroad cars would be loaded directly from the ships. With container ships, you just need a crane to put a container on a flat bed railroad car. Of course, that wooden railroad bridge is so old that it stays up just by force of habit.
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