Returning Port Workers Face Huge Backlog
 | West Coast Port Shutdown |
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orkers returned to West Coast ports Wednesday night to begin catching up with the backlog caused by a 10-day lockout -- a process that could take up to nine weeks, news reports said.
Working in a miasma smelling of some 240,000 pounds of rotting fruits and vegetables that had been bound for Asia and South America but were spoiling in containers, the members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union told Bloomberg News it cannot work as fast as before.
“We are going to work according to the contract,” a union spokesman told Bloomberg.
The union returned to work after a Federal court agreed to head a government request for an 80-day cooling off period under the Taft-Hartley act.
The stoppage was technically due to a lockout by the Pacific Maritime Association, the bargaining unit for the port operators. However, PMA said the lockout was imposed because the union was engaged in a work slowdown.
As The 10,500 members of the union went back to work Wednesday evening, they were greeted with stacks of everything from car parts to Christmas presents that piled up during the 10 days West Coast ports were shut down, the Associated Press said.
Dockworkers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were expected to labor around the clock, officials told AP. Work also resumed at five terminals in Tacoma, Wash., said Dick Marzano, vice president of ILWU Local 23.
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