Tense negotiations have culminated in a deal for union workers employed by West Coast port employers. Paul Berger reports in The Wall Street Journal:
West Coast dockworkers reached a tentative labor deal with port employers Wednesday following more than a year of contentious negotiations that have disrupted trade flows from California to Washington state.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents more than 22,000 dockworkers, and the Pacific Maritime Association, representing employers at 29 ports, said the agreement would run for six years.
The tentative agreement must be ratified by rank-and-file workers and by the ocean shipping companies and terminal operators that make up the employers’ group, a process that could take several months.
The agreement came after rising tensions over recent weeks led to job actions by dockworkers at various cargo terminals, raising concerns over potentially wider disruptions that would rattle the American economy.
The two sides said Julie Su, the Labor secretary designate, helped broker the deal. Su flew to San Francisco to encourage calm as the labor slowdowns affected operations from the nation’s busiest container port complex at Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., to key export gateways at Oakland, Calif., and Seattle.
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