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The container shipping industry in Western Canada is bracing for the possibility of an extended strike at the ports of Prince Rupert and Vancouver after longshore workers went on strike Saturday morning as threatened over a contract dispute.

The ports are adjusting operations to mitigate cargo buildup as both sides remain far apart on how to best fill existing heavy-duty maintenance jobs and whether the union’s remit should expand to other types of maintenance jobs at facilities, according to two sources close to the matter.

The Canada affiliate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and waterfront employers also face a wide divide on what they’ll accept in salary increases, paralleling the major stumbling block US West Coast employers and longshore labor finally overcame in announcing a tentative deal on June 15 after more than a year of negotiations.

Canadian shippers moving cargo through the British Columbia ports have few options for diversions. The US West Coast longshore union on Thursday signaled its solidarity in a letter to its Canadian counterpart. The International Longshoremen’s Association, which handles cargo on the US and East Coasts, went a step farther, pledging Wednesday to not handle any diverted cargo from Vancouver and Prince Rupert. Through connecting rail networks, US importers and exporters also ship goods through the British Columbia ports and have more alternative routing options.

After ILWU Canada workers began a strike at 8 a.m. Pacific time on Saturday, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority said to mitigate backlogs it was adjusting how it directs and manages anchorage. For example, vessel anchorages in the inner harbor, where DP Centerm and GCT Vanterm operate, are now limited to 48 hours. Average rail dwell times at Vancouver marine terminals were under five days, according to port authority metrics, reflecting generally fluid cargo flow before containers stopped moving Saturday morning.

Late night bargaining sessions on Thursday and through Friday night between the Canada ILWU and employers, with from the assistance Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, failed to produce a contract agreement to replace the one that expired at the end of March. The ILWU filed a 72-hour strike notice with the federal government on Wednesday.

Canadian West Coast employers locked out the ILWU for less than 24 hours in May 2019 after an impasse in contract negotiations. Semi-automation, centered on the then new rail project at GCT Deltaport, frustrated negotiations, and now color current talks due to the prospect of some level of automation at a planned C$3 billion (US$ 2.2 billion) Vancouver terminal, Robert Bank Terminal 2.

Federal Labor Minister Seamus O’Regan on Saturday tweeted that mediators were still at the table, adding that the Trudeau government “cannot emphasize this enough — the best deals for both parties are reached at the table.”

All eyes on Ottawa 

The government took a similar approach in 2021 to Montreal port strikes, signaling support for both sides to work out their differences through negotiation and praising the merits of collective bargaining.  Parliament passed back-to-work legislation after four weeks of sporadic port disruption at Montreal, ending the strike and forcing an arbitrated contract.

With Parliament out of session and unable to potentially pass back-to-work legislation, the pressure is on the Trudeau government to use its political capital to force a deal between ILWU Canada and the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is generally viewed within the Canadian shipping industry as having acted too slowly — and weakly — when containerized supply chains were significantly disrupted over the last three years.

The stakes are high this time, given the size of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, the country’s largest and third-largest ports by volume, respectively. Vancouver and Prince Rupert handle more than C$800 million (US $604 million) in trade daily, equating to a quarter of all of Canada’s trade in goods, according to the BCMEA.

Canadian industry on Wednesday urged the government to act, though, it expressed its support for collective bargaining. Canada’s supply chains are already fragile and the strike will ripple through agriculture to manufacturing industries, while consumer and businesses grapple with inflation, wrote Robin Guy, vice-president and deputy leader of government relations at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and David van Hemmen is vice-president at the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.

“We are seeing signs that goods destined for Canada are already being routed to other ports, adding costs and increasing the environmental footprint of trade, all to Canadians’ detriment,” the duo wrote in the Globe and Mail.

Source from JOC.com

Maritime employers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) late Wednesday announced they had reached a tentative agreement on a new six-year contract covering all 29 ports along the US West Coast.

The deal, subject to ratification by both parties, ends 13 months of contentious negotiations marked by on-again, off-again job actions that disrupted port operations on the coast and diverted growing volumes of cargo to the East and Gulf coasts.

“We are…pleased to turn our full attention back to the operation of the West Coast ports,” the ILWU and Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) said in a joint statement, noting the new deal “was reached with assistance from Acting US Secretary of Labor Julie Su.”

The statement said the parties would not release details of the tentative agreement “at this time.”

The contract ratification processes normally takes at least one month.

“…The tentative agreement delivers important stability for workers, for employers, and for our country’s supply chain,” Su said in a statement.

The joint statement implies that the job actions that began last fall, such as the refusal of some ILWU locals to dispatch sufficient labor in key job classifications or the late dispatching of dockworkers, would come to an end.

Talks were entering critical phase 

Entering this week, sources told the Journal of Commerce the negotiations had entered a critical phase in which the talks could go either way – a tentative settlement by the end of the week or a possible strike or employer lockout. The importance of this week was demonstrated by the arrival of Su in San Francisco on Monday following a week of labor actions that disrupted port operations up and down the West Coast. Su, after meeting with the ILWU and PMA on Monday, has stayed in the Bay area since, remaining on call as needed.

The deal will be met with relief from shippers and retail groups, who expressed constant dismay at the port disruptions and diversion of cargo away from the West Coast over the past year.

Uncertainty over the reliability of West Coast labor has had a devastating impact on the region’s market share as retailers diverted a large volume of discretionary cargo to the East and Gulf coasts. The West Coast’s share of US imports from Asia declined from 62% in January-May 2021 to 58.6% during the first five months of 2022 and 56% through the first five months of this year, according to PIERS, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global.

“The supply chain and economy will benefit greatly from this new contract, and the San Pedro Bay’s role as the most important gateway for trans-Pacific trade will be enhanced,” Mario Cordero, executive director of the Port of Long Beach, tweeted Wednesday night after the deal was announced.

Source from JOC.com

Bill Mongelluzzo, Senior Editor | Jun 9, 2023, 3:10 PM EDT

A vessel backlog that developed earlier this week at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach amid a lack of longshore labor was cleared Friday, a sign that progress was being made in coastwide contract negotiations between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and maritime employers.

Talks between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents ocean carriers and marine terminals, continued in San Francisco Friday for a third straight day. That in itself was another positive indicator, sources said, with negotiations hitting the 13-month mark this weekend.

Sources said the normal complement of workers – known as “lashers” — who secure the top row of containers on a vessel was dispatched Thursday night and early Friday in Los Angeles and Long Beach, allowing ships to be worked without disruption. The ILWU locals in Southern California refused to dispatch sufficient lashers earlier this week, causing delays that resulted in a backlog of vessels.

“It’s good today,” a source close to vessel operations in Los Angeles-Long Beach said Friday. “Our labor (orders) were filled last night and today.”

Disruption continues in Seattle, Tacoma 

Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, said the backlog of container ships that were forced to slow-steam or stop at anchor had cleared by the day shift on Friday. Four vessels scheduled to arrive by midday Friday would most likely go directly to berth, Louttit said.

Cargo handling in Oakland, meanwhile, was normal for a second straight day.

“The Port of Oakland’s marine terminals are open and operating normally (Friday),” a spokesperson for the port said in a statement to the Journal of Commerce. ”The number of vessels waiting for a berth in Oakland is five, which is about average.”

Operations at Seattle and Tacoma, however, were “still bad” Friday, another source said, as job actions by dockworkers continued. Crane productivity at the Port of Seattle, which plunged to less than 10 percent of normal this week and was only slightly better in Tacoma, remained exceptionally poor on Friday.

The PMA said in a statement Friday that Seattle and Tacoma “continue to suffer significant slowdowns as a result of targeted ILWU work actions.”

The ILWU declined comment.

The fact that the ILWU and PMA held contract negotiations Friday for the third straight day is viewed by sources with knowledge of the talks as a positive sign. In recent weeks, the two sides had been meeting about once per week and were reportedly making little progress, which was demonstrated by the cargo-handling disruptions launched last week by ILWU locals that were intended to pressure the PMA into making concessions on wages.

The two sides have been far apart on the wage issue, with the ILWU reportedly demanding an almost 100% increase in the straight-time hourly wage, with the PMA’s offer said to be in the low single-digits.

“Even though some port operations have improved, the ILWU’s repeated disruptive work actions at strategic ports along the West Coast are increasingly causing companies to divert cargo to more customer-friendly and reliable locations along the Gulf and East Coasts,” the PMA said in its statement. “It is difficult to win back cargo once it’s diverted.”

Source from JOC.com

US West Coast longshore labor is flexing its power to seek significantly higher wages and manning changes that would put two workers rather than one on some port equipment, sources said Monday, continuing a fourth day of disruptions at some marine terminals.

Several container terminals were hit with job actions in Seattle, Long Beach and Los Angeles on Monday, according to sources. While the severity of port disruptions on Monday was less than on Friday when dockworkers shut down a number of terminals along the coast from Long Beach to Seattle, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) are still far apart on salary and manning levels, according to four sources close to the negotiations.

One operator at a Los Angeles marine terminal said he didn’t receive any of the labor he requested from the ILWU hiring hall on Monday, adding, “We probably will idle the ship today.”

A spokesperson for SSA Marine said labor gangs working four vessels in Seattle were fired on Monday because of low productivity on the cranes. SSA, which operates three terminals in Long Beach, said two of the terminals there have not worked an international ship since Saturday.

The sporadic ILWU job actions that continued over the weekend have included slowing down ship-to-shore crane productivity from the normal 25 to 26 lifts per crane per hour to about 20 lifts per hour, or even lower.

The PMA slammed the ILWU in a statement Monday for continuing “concerted and disruptive work actions.”

“Union leaders are implementing many familiar disruption tactics from their job action playbook, including refusing to dispatch workers to marine terminals, slowing operations, and making unfounded health and safety claims,” PMA said. “The ILWU’s coast-wide work actions since June 2 are forcing retailers, manufacturers and other shippers to shift cargo away from the West Coast in favor of ports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Much of the diverted cargo may never return to the West Coast.”

The ILWU declined to comment. But the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) issued a statement saying it “stands in solidarity” with the ILWU, claiming the union has been “disparaged by the PMA through a calculated media campaign designed to boost its contractual leverage at the expense of West Coast dockworkers.”

Spokespersons at port authorities said most of their terminals that were affected Friday and over the weekend received full labor allocations for Monday’s day shift.

White House monitoring situation

During a briefing Monday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration was monitoring contract negotiations closely and pointed to both sides tentatively agreeing on undisclosed “certain key issues.” The White House was “going to continue to encourage all parties to work in good faith toward a mutually beneficial resolution that ensures that workers get fair benefits, equality of life and the wages they deserve,” Jean-Pierre said.

The job actions taking place on the West Coast in recent days prompted the National Retail Federation (NRF) on Monday to send its third letter to the Biden administration urging federal intervention in the negotiations between the ILWU and the PMA, which represents shipping lines and terminal operators, since the coastwide contract negotiations began in May 2022.

“As we enter the peak shipping season for the holidays, these additional disruptions will force retailers and other important shipping partners to continue to shift cargo away from the West Coast ports until a new labor contract is established,” David French, the NRF’s senior vice president of government relations, said in a letter to the Biden administration. “It is imperative that the parties return to the negotiating table. We urge the administration to mediate to ensure the parties quickly finalize a new contract without additional disruptions.”

Union seeking significant salary hike

Negotiations are said to be hung up over an unprecedented demand by the ILWU for a wage increase of $7.50 per hour for each year of the proposed six-year contract, which would increase longshore wages by close to 100% over the life of the contract. Two sources close to the talks confirmed the union’s wage demand.

By comparison, wage increases over the past 20 years have been in the range of 50 cents to $1.50 per hour for each year of the contract, according to the PMA’s annual report.

The ILWU is looking to take advantage of the record profits carriers booked in 2021 and 2022 amid pandemic-induced disruption in the global supply chain that came amid historic import levels from Asia and massive consumer spending. But those profits have since diminished as the ocean shipping market returned to normalcy with consumers pulling back on spending their discretionary income on merchandise.

The ILWU is also reportedly demanding that certain cargo-handling equipment, such as yard tractors, be assigned to two dockworkers. That has long been a practice with ship-to-shore cranes, which require a higher level of skill. Under the ILWU’s demand, two drivers would be assigned to each yard tractor, which means one longshoreman would work for four hours and get paid for eight, and the second longshoreman would work the remaining four hours of the shift and get paid for eight.

Another significant issue in the negotiations involves retroactive pay, sources say. In each contract negotiation, there has been an unspoken agreement between the PMA and ILWU that whatever wage increase is agreed upon in the new contract, it would be retroactive back to the expiration of the previous contract, a source told the Journal of Commerce. That means the PMA and ILWU have been operating under the assumption that the wage increase being discussed for the new contract would be retroactive to July 1, 2022, when the prior deal expired.

But with negotiations now past the one-year mark, the PMA has reportedly told the ILWU that retroactive pay will be off the table as of July 1 if a tentative contract is not reached by then, according to the source. That PMA strategy is designed to provide a sense of urgency so the ILWU will reach an agreement soon rather than dragging the negotiations out further, the source said.

Terminal operators told the Journal of Commerce that if ILWU job actions stopped and cargo handling went smoothly Monday, coastwide negotiations between the union and PMA would resume on Tuesday. But it’s uncertain if that will happen now.

Trans-Pacific container lines are trying to push up sagging spot rates with an April 15 general rate increase (GRI), sparking a spike in cargo shipments as US importers seek to avoid higher rates and nudging them to wrap up annual service contracts.

How successful carriers are in securing GRIs — ranging from $600 to $1,200 per FEU — comes down to the health of so-called green shoots of demand and the effectiveness of increased blanking of capacity. General rates increases are noteworthy, but a recent uptick in vessel utilizations has raised carrier hopes that they’ll be able to get some traction on this round due to a presumptive return of shipping patterns with carriers canceling nearly 50 sailings this month.

For a standard 40-foot container, Mediterranean Shipping Co., CMA CGM, and HMM have each filed notice of a $600 GRI effective April 15, according to customer notices. For the inland rail move, both MSC and CMA CGM are charging an additional $200 on top of the GRI. Smaller carriers Wan Hai Lines and ZIM Integrated Shipping have filed notice of a $1,000 and $1,200 GRI, respectively, also effective for the same date.

Utilization rates on the Asia to US West Coast routing have ticked up in recent weeks to over 85 percent, outpacing a similar spike seen ahead of the April 15 GRI two years ago, but tracking below the high 80s seen in the same period in 2022, according to maritime analyst Linerlytica.

The utilization spike ahead of the April 15 GRI dropped in the following weeks of 2022 and 2021. The extent of the likely drop this year will provide a hint to how well carriers have been able to recalibrate oversupply to weakening Asia import demand, which was down 31.1 percent in February year on year, according to PIERS, a sister company of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global. PIERS volume data for March imports will be published later this week.

US retailers are forecasting that US imports will be down compared to last year until at least August, according to the Friday release of Global Port Tracker, created by Hackett Associations on behalf of the National Retail Federation.

As service contracting power has shifted from the carrier to shippers, many importers have held off on signing trans-Pacific service contracts, hoping to leverage the sagging spot rate market and learn at which rate ranges the largest US big box retailers signed. Carriers and shippers traditionally try to complete service contracts by the end of April since the lifecycle for most deals begins May 1.

Shippers emboldened by lower spot rates 

Robert Khachatryan, CEO and founder of forwarder Freight Right, said in late March while some of his company’s larger BCO clients — those with upwards of 5,000 TEU — received discounted rates of $1,600 to $1,700 to the West Coast, they were easily dismissed by shippers because the spot rate for most forwarders at the time was about $1,100 to $1,300.

Sagging rates, to some extent, have emboldened shippers to seek more competitive contract rates.

“Considering recent projections that spot market rates are nearing the bottom and should level out by the middle of this year, it is reasonable to expect that the contract rate for mid-size forwarders and mid- to large BCOs will eventually land about $1,500 to $1,600 and $2,500 to $2,700 for the West Coast and East Coast, respectively,” Khachatryan wrote in a Journal of Commerce commentary.

Marc Bibeau, chief executive of OEC Group, told the Journal of Commerce that relative to previous GRIs issued in April, which ranged from $300 to $500, the current ones are “aggressive,” but serve as an opening gambit to get shippers to contract at a rate somewhere between spot rates and the spot rate plus the GRI.

Given the sharp drop in West Coast imports, Bibeau said it was still unclear whether carriers will be able to get the full GRI when shippers tender their containers. But he said that he understands that carriers need to get rates back to a level where they can maintain reliable schedules and provide enough capacity to the market.

“The current market conditions are not conducive to any cost escalations,” Bibeau said. “But the carriers are now back in a loss-making position with the FAK (freight-all-kind) rate and need to get a breakeven rate where service won’t be compromised.”

Smaller shippers that are now in contract talks with ocean carriers focus more on spot rates because they can more easily switch their cargo between their long-term contract and a forwarder’s spot rate, James Caradonna, vice president at M + R Forwarding, told the Journal of Commerce.

“Increasing short-term rates helps carriers accelerate BCO (beneficial cargo owner) contract negotiations, especially for those BCOs unsure about the proposals in front of them,” Caradonna said.

Cargo rolling occurring 

Eastbound trans-Pacific spot rates have been in a slight descent or flatlining, according to an analysis of rates from Drewry, Platts, Xeneta, and the Shanghai Shipping Exchange. As of April 7, the Shanghai to US West Coast rate sat at $1,292 per FEU, according to the Shanghai Shipping Exchange, up from the 2023 low of $1,148 per FEU on March 31.

According to Caradonna’s estimates, about 70,000 TEU of ocean capacity, accounting for 25 percent of capacity to the US Pacific Southwest ports, has been blanked weekly since the end of January.  To the Pacific Northwest ports, ocean carriers have cut about 30,000 TEU of sailings over the same time, amounting to 30 percent of capacity from Asia. The volume drop has resulted in Pacific Northwest marine terminals cutting their operating hours.

“This is a big reason that carriers are rolling cargo to the West Coast,” Caradonna said. “The ships are full, but it is in large part due to blank sailings.”

Trans-Pacific services to the US East Coast have seen about 45,000 TEU per week cut, amounting to 20 percent of capacity.

Cargo rollover, when higher-paying spot cargo is loaded instead of lower-paying freight, is occurring at “varying degrees” at Shanghai, Ningbo, Yantian, and Xiamen, Caradonna said.

Source from Journal of Commerce

As US import demand continues to wane, ocean carriers plan to cancel almost 50 voyages that were scheduled to depart from Chinese ports now through the end April, amounting to as much as 443,000 TEU in trans-Pacific capacity that will be blanked, according to data from container shipping analysts.

Those blanked sailings signal that US ports will continue to see weaker year-over-year volumes at least to the beginning of summer. US imports from China in February fell 37 percent year on year to 640,846 TEU, according to data from PIERS, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global.

For ocean carriers, the decision to cancel sailings suggests they expect no rebound in trans-Pacific freight rates that are now at two-year lows. The Shanghai Shipping Exchange shows the rate from Shanghai to the US West Coast at $1,163 per FEU, while the rate to the East Coast sits at $2,194/FEU.

Those 47 blanked sailings from Chinese ports represent some 443,100 TEU in capacity, according to Monroe’s data, which compiles schedule information from 70 trans-Pacific and Suez services to North America.

The blanked capacity does not directly translate into an actual drop in container volumes as the services may still call ports in other Asian countries. Likewise, a ship may skip one Chinese port but call another. But the blanking data does point to ongoing weakness in China’s shipments to the US.

Shanghai accounted for 27 of the blanked sailings during the period, with some 241,750 TEU of capacity bypassing China’s busiest port by volume.

Some 12 sailings from Yantian, China’s major southern port, will be blanked through the third week of April, accounting for some 126,100 TEU in nominal capacity, Monroe’s data shows.

While not exactly matching Monroe’s data, Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis also sees an uptick in blank sailings for the coming weeks. In a report published Friday, Sea-Intelligence estimated that ocean carriers plan to blank 354,100 TEU of trans-Pacific capacity during April, amounting to 13.7 percent of deployed capacity in that trade lane.

That is up from their week-earlier estimate of 200,400 TEU of blanked capacity in April, amounting to just under 8 percent of deployed capacity.

Fleet gains offsetting blank sailings 

Those blanked sailings appear barely able to keep ahead of increases to fleet size expected this year.

Meanwhile, US West Coast marine terminals appear to be steeling themselves for more volume declines by cutting work shifts for longshore labor. The Port of Los Angeles reported that container throughput during the last week of March is down 40 percent from a year earlier.

Shippers, too, are also reporting that inventories of retail goods remain stubbornly high, with the hopes for a second-half volume recovery now diminishing.