Port of Long Beach CEO Jon Slangerup says he ”realized that labor had ‘very little to do’ with the disruptions, that the difficulties had more to do with organizational glitches and inefficient cargo-handling practices” — a conclusion consistent with ILWU’s statements during negotiations.
From a Bloomberg article titled ‘Record Long Beach port traffic shows strength in U.S. demand’:
The Port of Long Beach — which is poised to overtake neighboring Los Angeles next year to become the No. 1 shipping gateway in the country — had a record month in July, with cargo volume up 18 percent from July 2014. Figures being released later this month will show unprecedented traffic again in August, and early signs in September are “very very encouraging,” Jon Slangerup, the Long Beach port’s chief executive officer, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s offices in New York last week.
The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles lost business during a dispute between the labor union for 20,000 dockworkers and their employers. Slangerup said in February that labor issues accounted for 80 percent of a bottleneck that kept as many as 36 vessels idling at sea for days at a time.
In the interview last week, however, he said he realized that labor had “very little to do” with the disruptions, that the difficulties had more to do with organizational glitches and inefficient cargo-handling practices.