Labor secretary: Pandemic, worker vexation feed port issues

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (AP) — During a visit to South Carolina's Port of Charleston, the nation's ninth-busiest, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said Wednesday that slowdowns and bottlenecks at the nation's shipping terminals are the result of an ongoing pandemic, coupled with problems like stagnant wages for some workers along the supply chain.

“They were saying that they’ve been in this industry for 25 years, but their wages haven’t shown that,” Walsh told The Associated Press on Wednesday, after a tour of the port and roundtable discussion with truck drivers at a union hall in Charleston.

“We really have to think about how we respect our workers better, and some of that might mean to pay our workers more money, because they’ve been doing their service for a long time and have seen no increases,” he added.

Walsh's visit came as part of his travels to ports around the country, amid a container ship traffic jam threatening the U.S. economy and holiday shopping season. The slowdown, as unloaded goods wait for trucks to move them to their next destination, is leading to mass shortages and delays, as well as a longer than expected bout of inflation.

Last month, President Joe Biden announced a deal to expand the Port of Los Angeles to a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week operation as a way to try to tamp down inflation. That move, Walsh told AP Wednesday, is part of the solution, as is patience for a coronavirus pandemic that seems to have slowed but is still ongoing.

“We’re not back to where we were, pre-pandemic,” he said. “People are ready to move on, but unfortunately we’re still living with a pandemic.”

Walsh’s visit also comes amid an ongoing labor dispute between South Carolina and the dockworkers’ union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, related to who should...