Port of the Week! - Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA

Only three ports of non-China origin cracked the top ten of last year's busiest gateways. Los Angeles and Long Beach were one of them.

In the Journal of Commerce’s global container port rankings for 2022, Los Angeles and Long Beach landed as ninth in the world in total container throughput in the year.

The Southern California sisters handled an impressive 19.05 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) with no other U.S. ports coming to close this.

The Port of New York and New Jersey, America’s second busiest gateway, was more than nine million short of Los Angeles and Long Beach’s mark.

While it’s unrealistic for any U.S. port to dethrone the country’s stronghold of foreign trade, Los Angeles and Long Beach did see a 5.1 percent volume drop from 2021.

This decline can be attributed to the market share East and Gulf coast ports siphoned from the California ports as anxious shippers averted the latter during prolonged labor tensions on the West Coast.

Both New York and Savannah gained a 5.6 and 5.2 percent boost respectively in their volumes in 2022, signaling these two ports as the main beneficiaries of last year’s labor limbo.

However, with a tentative dockworker agreement finally made this summer, Los Angeles and Long Beach are jaunting along the homestretch of formal labor peace on the West Coast.

There’s just one factor that remains. One final contract must be forged.

International Longshore and Warehouse Union (IWU) office workers and maritime employers in Southern California are still in active negotiations for a new contract.

While no hairs have been raised yet of a fallout, these negotiations are a remaining buttress to ensure West Coast harmony.

Fortunately, lead negotiators from the union and employers association agree the two sides are making progress ironing out a replacement to the six-year office worker contract that expired on June 30.

Insiders report there’s a lot of ground still to cover, namely in wages, pensions, and technology, but, at this time, there’s no fear of drastic actions, like strike or lockouts.

That said, the office worker contract is the last piece of the puzzle for this protracted cycle of West Coast contract negotiations.

ILWU dockworkers and the Pacific Maritime Association (port employers) reached a tentative agreement on June 16, while ILWU Canada and British Columbia port employers reached a tentative agreement this past Sunday, August 6.?