A bitter fight over port labour escalated yesterday as some business leaders joined shipping terminal owners and the longshoremen's union in blaming a regulator for a labour shortage that they say is crippling traffic and costing business.
The New York Shipping Association and the International Longshoremen's Association allege that the close scrutiny of prospective workers by the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor is driving up costs and leading some firms to take their business elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The union, the shippers and some business groups that use the port contend that the Waterfront Commission is slowing the pace of hiring at a time when retirements mean that more workers are needed to keep operations running smoothly. The Waterfront Commission is being blamed for a shortage of up to 800 workers at the port.
The commission, which was formed in 1953 to root out mob influence, said on Tuesday that the allegations are "demonstrably false" and that the critics have made "continuous misrepresentations" about what it does.
The commission said in a statement that it was dedicated to putting people to work as quickly as possible and that it "has not been the source of any labor shortages or slowdowns in the port".
"To the contrary," it added, "we have openly criticised the glacial pace at which the NYSA is moving with regard to getting longshoremen sponsored and working in the Port."
A major focus for the commission is to oversee the waterfront industry's hiring plan, which mandates that 51 percent of employees be returning veterans. It said that it has been forcefully advocating on behalf of military veterans because the two associations had been mostly "employing and training their own referrals."
The dispute is now before the US district court in Newark, which is considering a motion by the Waterfront Commission to have the shipping association's lawsuit dismissed. The suit alleges that the regulator is interfering with hiring in the port.
The Port Authority of New York, which has been monitoring the situation, said efforts to resolve the process needed to continue.
"We are pleased that 150 longshoremen and 75 checkers were recently hired, and that the Waterfront Commission agreed to the certification of 20 mechanics," the Authority said in a statement.
"We strongly urge the Waterfront Commission and the New York Shipping Association to continue the significant progress they have made on port hiring issues."
The shipping association has been asking for 682 additional longshoremen and checkers to be cleared by the Commission for work at the region's ports. The Waterfront Commission said that 140 have been granted. Longshoremen are responsible for loading the ship while checkers, which are still regarded as longshoremen, count the items being loaded onto the ship.
The commission says the industry, represented by the shipping association and the longshoremen's union, have routinely lagged behind on sending through what are known as sponsorship forms for prospective employees.
The certifications, or sponsorships, are required before the regulator can approve an individual for work.
John Nardi, president of the New York Shipping Association, said his association was caught off guard by the sponsorship requirements, which he said had changed and required lawyers to be brought in, delaying the process.
"The goal posts are constantly changing," Nardi said, later adding that while some employees were now being processed smoothly, other applications had dragged on for months.
"We made an application on September 9 and we didn't get our first person until February 4," he said.
"We can't survive in those conditions. We need to hire the people when we need them."
At the coalition's news conference on Tuesday, more than 1,000 port workers rallied at the Maher Terminals in Elizabeth, demanding the Waterfront Commission change the way it polices the industry and its labour pool.
The groups backing the union and the shipping association Tuesday included representatives from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, New Jersey Retail Merchants Association and Metropolitan Marine Maintenance Contractors' Association, along with New Jersey General Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto and other lawmakers.
Charles Wowkanech, president of the New Jersey state AFL-CIO, which represents a collection of unions, said the economic effects of the labor shortage are multiplying.
"We're diverting ships to other ports, our workers are working around the clock under mandatory overtime to try to unload the ships," he said.
"It's driving our costs up, we're becoming inefficient," he added.
Gail Toth, executive director of the New Jersey Motor Truck Association, said trucks were sitting idle for hours at the port as they waited for incoming freight to be unloaded at the dock, which lacked the manpower to move the containers.
"It's gotten so bad that now we have truck drivers who don't want to come down to the port and wait five to 10 hours," Toth said.
The slowdown at the port has hit some high-profile national retailers, said John Holub, president of the New Jersey Retail Merchants Association.
He said one home-improvement store chain was forced to divert its shipping containers to an alternative port. Another 20 or 30 companies were facing a similar predicament, Holub said.
"It's quite telling when you can get a container from [a southern port] and over land quicker than you can get it off the dock here," he said.
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