Los Angeles Port Boycott Hits Key Economic Link
AuthorAffiliation Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal</br></br>Jointly, the neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which make up Los Angeles Harbor, account for about 25% of all U.S. container traffic. For Los Angeles and Southern California, the commercial role is far broader.</br></br>"International trade is perhaps the single most important driving force in the region's economy in the 1990s, and will continue to be a driving force in the years to come," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Regional Financial Associates Inc. in West Chester, Pa. "The port has been a key part of that flow."</br></br>Even during the dark days of Southern California's recession in the early 1990s, foreign trade continued to grow. "In many senses, it saved us," says Jack Kyser, chief economist of Economic Development Corp., a research group in Los Angeles. "There were days when I was feeling a lot of pain, and I would call someone down at the port to brighten my day." The rising tide of foreign traffic totaled $157 billion of imports and exports last year.</br></br>But the seeds of labor friction were sown in this growth, shipping-industry analysts say. As more ships have arrived, trade has relied increasingly on what is now believed to be about 6,500 truckers who haul containers between the harbor and delivery points. Mostly independent owners and operators of often-battered trucks, these drivers have been a low-paid and often-pressured link in a system that moved as many as 10,000 containers a day across a few dozen miles of freeway. The drivers are a largely immigrant, Hispanic group. Their numbers have grown with cargo volume. Competition kept haul rates low. And pay has effectively further declined in many cases, shipping insiders say, as truckers, paid by the haul, have been slowed by traffic with the growing cargo volume.