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No doubt that infections of dockworkers is contributing to a loss of LA-LB port productivity but worries that it's going to shut down the port seem overblown. https://bit.ly/39dEjHv
This is not to lessen the impact COVID is having: more than 600 known cases of the coronavirus at the ports of , and 12 deaths, since Dec. 1. 'They are showing up more than five days a week. It’s pretty heroic,' PMA President Jim McKenna.
And though the flare up after the holidays has been sharp, there are 12,000 registered and casual (part-time) ILWU workers in Southern California. That's sufficient labor for many cargo-handling activities.
A shortage of yard crane operators is where the labor pinch hit the hardest. Full work gangs can be dispatched only if there are enough longshoremen that have been trained to operate the cranes that move containers within the terminal yards.
Dockworkers often have to work closely together amid a pandemic and are an essential link in global containerized supply chains. There's humanistic and economic sense in prioritizing vaccines for them.
"Longshore workers have been working every day through the pandemic to keep cargo moving despite the exposure to a life-threatening virus they face every day," Frank Ponce De Leon, ILWU'S coast committeeman, told @billmongelluzzo