Excerpts from the Associated Press:
While West Coast seaports struggle to keep up with billions of dollars of cargo, dockworkers and their employers apparently aren’t close to a new contract nearly six months after their old deal expired.
While work speed has been an issue in several major ports, so has an ongoing lack of truck beds to haul containers of goods from dockside yards to distribution warehouses. Hardest hit have been U.S. exporters of apples, potatoes and other produce, who can’t get their perishable goods to foreign markets in time. Some importers also have been affected, though not so badly to cause widespread shortages of holiday goods.
Negotiators for the association and the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union met Thursday in San Francisco. Neither side is publicly discussing what is happening behind closed doors, though each says proposals are being actively exchanged.