It’s another day of PMA and ILWU negotiations (at this writing talks are ongoing and it is easy to forget that it was in the middle of baseball season [July] when the contract expired) and a new participant US Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez has now (maybe inevitably) put his oar into the troubled waters of the West Coast waterfront labor dispute.

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) announced on February 11th that its members would halt cargo-handling operations at Pacific coast terminals for four upcoming days.

The PMA chief executive threatened to lockout longshore workers and shut down West Coast port operations if the ILWU does not immediately accept its contract terms.

Congress isn’t apt to pass a long-term surface transportation funding bill by June 1, according to several officials taking part Jan. 29-30 in a conference co-sponsored by the American Association of Port Authorities and the Transportation Research Board, in cooperation with the U.S. Maritime Administration.

The back up in ships waiting to berth continues this week (November 25th) at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Fourteen ships are at anchorage waiting to berth where normally there are no ships, according to a Port of Los Angeles spokesman.