The shut­down, affect­ing ter­mi­nals that han­dle 40% of inter­na­tion­al trade car­go, has cost exporters deeply while also earn­ing crit­i­cism from leg­is­la­tors. This lat­est move by port oper­a­tors comes nine months into new con­tract nego­ti­a­tions between PMA and the 20,000 dock­work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the Inter­na­tion­al Long­shore and Ware­house Union (ILWU). Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has now sent Sec­re­tary of Labor Thomas Perez to medi­ate for PMA and ILWU in hopes of spurring dis­cus­sions between the two sides. Fail­ure for Perez means poten­tial exec­u­tive action from Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to pre­vent fur­ther work shut­downs at these major Amer­i­can ports.

By the end of President’s Day 2015, thou­sands of con­tain­ers idled on ships that were left anchored and unworked at the 29 Amer­i­can ports on the West Coast for six of the pre­vi­ous 10 days. The oper­a­tional sus­pen­sion was imposed by the Pacif­ic Mar­itime Asso­ci­a­tion (PMA), an employ­er asso­ci­a­tion pre­dom­i­nant­ly con­sist­ing of multi­na­tion­al ship­ping cor­po­ra­tions, after con­clud­ing they were not will­ing to pay week­end and hol­i­day wages for what they deem to be ​“dimin­ished” pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by union dockworkers.

The new con­tract will be ten­ta­tive until the ILWU rank and file votes and offi­cial­ly approves of it. Craig Mer­rilees, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at ILWU, declined to give a date on a union con­tract vote but tells In These Times, ​“The ILWU’s rat­i­fi­ca­tion process is care­ful and demo­c­ra­t­ic, allow­ing rank-and-file work­ers a thor­ough and final say in the con­tract process.”

Details to this solu­tion have been sparse as both ILWU and PMA have declined to release fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the con­tents of the deal. Dur­ing a press call that same night, Perez was quot­ed by Politi­co as say­ing, ​“I don’t think any­one knows who the next arbi­tra­tor will be.” He went on to say, ​“What I do know, and have great con­fi­dence in, is the new arbi­tra­tion sys­tem is going to ensure that every­body gets a fair shake.”

Sec­re­tary Perez tweet­ed Fri­day night: ​“If it weren’t the last issue, it would have been solved ear­li­er. But both sides in ports dis­pute com­mit­ted to solv­ing prob­lem and did it.”

This marks a major con­ces­sion to ILWU, where union lead­ers had crit­i­cized the arbi­tra­tion mod­el for its life-term arbi­tra­tors appointments.

Update: ILWU and PMA agreed to a ten­ta­tive con­tract bro­kered by Labor Sec­re­tary Tom Perez on Fri­day after­noon. Sec­re­tary Perez had threat­ened to move nego­ti­a­tions to the White House if an agree­ment wasn’t made by the end of last week. The head of the Depart­ment of Labor bro­kered a break­through between the two sides on the piv­otal issue of the arbi­tra­tion process, as described by In These Times last Thurs­day, thus result­ing in a report­ed new sys­tem for select­ing arbi­tra­tors who are tasked with resolv­ing work­site disputes.

Craig Mer­rilees, ILWU’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer, says, ​“Employ­ers are point­ing the fin­ger at work­ers, but the biggest drops in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty have been caused by long­stand­ing con­ges­tion prob­lems that were trig­gered by indus­try decisions.”

Con­ges­tion issues, accord­ing to ana­lysts , began with use of ​“mega ships,” new mod­els of con­tain­er-car­ry­ing ves­sels that have caused severe bot­tle­necks in the ship­ping line due to increased capac­i­ty. This increase in capac­i­ty, says Dean McGrath, Pres­i­dent of ILWU Local 23 at the major U.S port of Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton, is moti­vat­ed by ​“short-sight­ed” cor­ner cutting.

“They have made deci­sions to save a nick­el, and it’s end­ed up cost­ing them a dol­lar,” he says.

Accord­ing to McGrath, larg­er ships have to be ser­viced at major ports, such as the ones at Los Ange­les, Long Beach, Oak­land, Seat­tle and Taco­ma, because small­er ports ​“aren’t ready to have mass input of car­go at one sit­ting.” He cites the need for mass infra­struc­ture improve­ment through­out West Coast ports in order to facil­i­tate the now-com­mon usage of ships report­ed to be 40% larg­er than pre­vi­ous standards.

The chal­lenge of increased capac­i­ty extends to port truck dri­vers, who now face a near dou­bling in wait time between trips to and from ports in addi­tion to what they say are poor wages .

“Their deci­sion­mak­ing process is get­ting made far­ther and far­ther away from the docks, by peo­ple sit­ting in board rooms,” says McGrath. ​“It’s a race to the bot­tom and some­times it doesn’t even make finan­cial sense for them.”

Anoth­er indus­try deci­sion lead­ing to back­log is the out­sourc­ing of vital ​“chas­sis” at ports. Chas­sis are the trail­ers used to move con­tain­ers between the ter­mi­nal and the trucks. Accord­ing to Forbes , ​“the num­ber of chas­sis required for a ship is between 2,000 and 5,000.” In the past two years, oper­a­tion and main­te­nance of the chas­sis has been increas­ing­ly moved from the ship­ping line oper­a­tors and towards third par­ties via out­sourc­ing — elim­i­nat­ing for­mer ILWU jobs. While ILWU has made juris­dic­tion over chas­sis inspec­tions a focal point of con­tract nego­ti­a­tions, PMA claims they have no author­i­ty over third par­ties who now own the chas­sis machines.

Regard­less of ILWU juris­dic­tion, Dr. Noël Hace­ga­ba, Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer for the Port of Long Beach, told Long Beach Post, ​“We don’t have enough chas­sis to go around, and on top of that the ones that are avail­able are not where they’re sup­posed to be. … A big ship comes to Ter­mi­nal A, for exam­ple, but Ter­mi­nal B has all the chas­sis.” This recent lack of chas­sis com­pounds con­ges­tion at west coast ports.

PMA has report­ed­ly admit­ted to ILWU at the nego­ti­at­ing table that it does not blame work­ers for con­ges­tion, but its press releas­es have indi­cat­ed the oppo­site. Since ear­ly Decem­ber, PMA has elim­i­nat­ed night and evening shifts at many major ports in response to sup­posed work­er ​“slow­downs.”

“PMA is clos­ing the ports in an effort to gain lever­age in nego­ti­a­tions, while blam­ing work­ers for their actions,” Mer­rilees says.

When ship­ping lanes reopened on Mon­day after last weekend’s two-day shut­down by PMA, the asso­ci­a­tion of employ­ers issued anoth­er press release accus­ing work­ers of orches­trat­ing a slow­down. This time, PMA “[revealed] the ILWU’s demand to be able to fire any arbi­tra­tor who rules against the Union.” The arbi­tra­tors are meant to be bal­anced judges that deal with labor dis­putes. Cur­rent­ly, arbi­tra­tors serve life terms, an issue for ILWU due to the lack of account­abil­i­ty with poten­tial con­flict of interest.

“Employ­ers are delib­er­ate­ly dis­tort­ing a per­fect­ly rea­son­able pro­pos­al to end life terms for area arbi­tra­tors, and have them serve instead as long as the con­tract. When the con­tract expires, both par­ties could agree to reap­point and choose to agree on some­one else,” Mer­rilees tells In These Times. ​“Per­fect­ly rea­son­able,” he says, ​“but appar­ent­ly the com­pa­nies opposed it so strong­ly that they decid­ed to close the ports … and restrict oper­a­tions by 2⁄ 3 — elim­i­nat­ing night and evening shifts — on days that the ports remain open.”

While PMA has tout­ed wage increas­es for full-time dock­work­ers, ILWU’s employ­ers allege that this is already atop an aver­age full-time salary of $147,000. McGrath remarks that PMA’s press releas­es have been effec­tive in spurring pub­lic out­rage to the point of even get­ting some hate mail.

“The whole thing about the pay is just a pro­pa­gan­da tool to turn the pub­lic against us,” he says. ​“It isn’t even about mon­ey — we’re fight­ing our jobs and our liveli­hood. The work­ers know you can’t make $147,000. In order to make $147,000, you’d have to work at one of the high­est skilled pay grade for 3,300 hours.”

The alleged dis­crep­an­cies between PMA’s words and actions at this point, accord­ing to union offi­cials, is part of a failed pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign being con­duct­ed by what McGrath calls ​“one of the most despi­ca­ble com­pa­nies in the world,” Burson-Marsteller.

The glob­al PR giant is cur­rent­ly employed by PMA and is the same com­pa­ny that led pub­lic rela­tions for Union Car­bide India Lim­it­ed after the Bhopal dis­as­ter that killed 3,787 and left over half a mil­lion Indi­ans injured, as well cam­paigns for the mil­i­tary jun­ta of Argenti­na between the late 70s to mid 80s. More recent­ly, it helped Philip Mor­ris beat back anti-smok­ing leg­is­la­tors, and ser­viced the pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny for­mer­ly known as Black­wa­ter after its scan­dal-plagued years in Iraq.

As con­tract nego­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue and their employ­er con­tin­u­ing to shut the port down, ILWU faces steep chal­lenges. But McGrath sees an upside.

“They have been test­ing our resolve, try­ing dif­fer­ent strate­gies, think­ing that we were going to cave and they gross­ly mis­judged the uni­ty of the mem­ber­ship,” he says. ​“In one way, I hate to see this hap­pen­ing, but on the oth­er, it’s a fact that it has giv­en [mem­bers] more edu­ca­tion than I can do in a mil­lion programs.”