LA-LB still aiming for gray chassis pool launch next month - Bill Mongelluzzo, Senior Editor | Jan 07, 2015 6:30PM EST Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said the Southern California ports continue to work toward a Feb. 1 roll-out date for a neutral, or gray chassis concept in the busiest U.S. port complex, despite the protracted contract negotiations between the longshore union and waterfront employers The news surfaced earlier this week that an International Longshore and Warehouse Union demand to inspect all outbound chassis at marine terminals is one of the more important issues holding up negotiation of a contract agreement. Labor is a critical participant in chassis arrangements because pool operators have agreements with unions such as the ILWU or International Association of Machinists to perform maintenance and repair work. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Oct. 30 announced that they had reached agreement with the four major providers of chassis in Southern California — DCLI, TRAC Intermodal, Flexi-Van and SSA Marine — to work toward a phased approach to introduce the gray chassis concept by Feb. 1. The ILWU contract negotiations had been underway for more than five months by that time, and since there had been no significant work slowdowns or stoppages, there was a general feeling of optimism on the West Coast that a new contract would be in place by Feb. 1. However, on Oct. 31, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, the union began to slow down port operations in Seattle-Tacoma, followed by slowdowns in Southern California and Oakland. The PMA, which represents waterfront employers, said the job actions have continued nonstop since then and have contributed to the crippling port congestion on the West Coast. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service announced Monday that the ILWU and PMA agreed to continue the negotiations under its auspice, which has increased optimism that the impasse in the negotiations will be overcome. When news surfaced this week that chassis M&R is a major issue in the contract negotiations, it appeared that having a gray chassis regime in place in less than a month would not be attainable, but Seroka said he is “still very hopeful” that February will usher in the first phase of the program. He said the concept that is being developed is a “pool of pools” in which the major equipment owners would share their chassis with complete interoperability. That means a trucker will be able to pick up a chassis/container combination at any of the 13 marine terminals or stop-start locations in the harbor and return the chassis to any of those locations regardless of which pool owns the asset. The absence of equipment interoperability was one of the chief causes of port congestion and truck delays in Los Angeles-Long Beach even before the ILWU contract negotiations stalled in late October. Truckers are still forced to make split moves where, for example, they must bring a container to one terminal but they must take the chassis to another terminal because the chassis belongs to a pool operator that does not have a contractual relationship with the first facility. Seroka said the chassis leasing companies and pools since October have been busy developing the business rules for the gray chassis pool, and setting up the information technology system that will track and trace the location of the chassis, alert users where the equipment is needed and flag those chassis that are out of service because of needed repairs. Developing a program to manage the approximately 95,000 chassis in the port complex and identifying vacant sites where the equipment can be stored and repaired is moving along at a steady pace, but dealing with labor issues that are still not resolved in the ILWU contract negotiations has cast an air of uncertainty over the effort. The PMA charges the ILWU in recent months has complicated the situation by stepping up its chassis inspections, such as turning the normal five-point inspection into a 10-point inspection, and arbitrarily “red-tagging” as defective dozens of chassis that have nothing wrong with them. Hundreds of ILWU mechanic jobs are involved in chassis M&R because, until this year, shipping lines owned the vast majority of chassis that are used in the harbor, and the lines are all members of the PMA. It was always assumed that the existing M&R contracts between the various chassis pools and the ILWU and the IAM would remain in effect under the new gray chassis regime, especially if repair work is required when the equipment is at a marine terminal. However, the union fears that since the chassis-leasing companies that now own most of the assets are not PMA members, they will perform the repairs and maintenance work at off-dock locations with less-costly non-ILWU labor. Furthermore, the ILWU has a reputation of overstaffing M&R operations. When SSA Marine last year took over two adjacent terminals in the Port of Oakland that had used ILWU labor and replaced them with IAM mechanics, the number of mechanics employed to do the M&R work went from 80 ILWU mechanics to 16 IAM mechanics, said Don Crosatto, IAM area director in Northern California. Therefore, if the new contract includes a provision that calls for ILWU inspections of all chassis before they leave the marine terminals, complications could develop because the owners of the chassis are the leasing companies. Those companies are the responsible parties in terms of ensuring that the equipment is in good operating condition, so it is in their best interest legally and financially to correct any defects before the equipment is released for use in the harbor. Further inspections at the terminals by ILWU mechanics would be considered time-consuming, costly and contributing to delays for truckers.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:08:07 +0000
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