With deal, West Coast seaports tackle huge cargo backlog
Source: AP-Excite
By JUSTIN PRITCHARD
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dockworkers along the West Coast began the monthslong task Saturday of clearing seaports of cargo that was caught up in a contract feud between their union and employers.
Parked off the Southern California coast is a flotilla of ships bulging with thousands of tractor-trailer sized containers that hold a shopper's delight of goods — which already would be on store shelves but for a labor dispute that has disrupted international trade.
The leader of the Port of Los Angeles, the nation's largest, said it would take three months "to get back a sense of normalcy."
The volume of cargo that West Coast dockworkers and their employers must clear, now that they've reached a tentative contract agreement Friday evening, is staggering. Put in a line, the containers would stretch 579 miles. Stacked up, they'd rise nearly 250 miles — about the orbiting altitude of the International Space Station.
FULL story at link.
Two ships sit anchored in Commencement Bay near the Port of Tacoma's grain facility, left, Friday, Feb. 20, 2015, in Tacoma, Wash. With a Friday deadline looming, negotiators for the two sides in the contract dispute that has snarled international trade at U.S. West Coast seaports are laboring to reach a settlement as billions of dollars of cargo are sitting massive ocean-going ships anchored outside port facilities. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150222/us--port_labor-dee657bd80.html
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