Port of Los Angeles' trade volume drops in November due to strike, report says

The Port of Los Angeles said its trade volume dropped in November, hurt by a week-long strike by clerical workers.

Container volume was down by 16 percent from the same period a year earlier.

But Port spokesman Phillip Sanfield said  the container volume lost during the strike will be reflected in the December data.

"Most of the cargo made its way back," Sanfield said.

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He attributed the decline in containers in November due to the strike and to a vessel that moved its cargo to the neighboring Port of Long Beach.

The clerical workers strike at the Port of L.A. was organized under the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Thousands of dockworkers refused to cross the picket lines, resulting in a shutdown of nearly all of the port’s eight terminals. The clerical workers and their employers negotiated a tentative agreement last month, ending the strike.

Unlike the Port of Los Angeles, the Port of Long Beach saw an increase in its trade volume. The number of total containers went up by about 21 percent in November, according to port data cited by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation in its newsletter.

That increase was due to “the expansion of services from some of the world’s largest carriers,” LAEDC said. The Port of Long Beach also had to shutdown some of its terminals because of the clerical workers’ strike but not as many as the Port of Los Angeles.

The author of the LAEDC article on the port data, Ferdinando Guerra, did not immediately return a call for comment.