The labor dispute between the longshoreman’s union and the Pacific Maritime Association management has had far reaching effects in the 29 ports along the west coast with ships offshore unable to offload their cargo and shipments on shore held up and prevented from leaving.

The effect on the economy at large will have to wait to be determined once the dispute is finally settled but for one West Seattle business, it is having dramatic impact.

The 23 year old Emerald Maritime is a freight forwarder located near the West Seattle Junction, dealing primarily with fruit shipments from eastern Washington growers to nations in the far east and middle east. The labor dispute which began in November has reduced the business for Emerald by as much as 35% said company Co-Owner Tom Alderson.

“Two weeks ago was really the last time we could have shipped apples to Asia in time for Lunar New Year which is coming up next week. To make matters worse the growers had the largest crop in history and so it’s all being kept in refrigerated storage because it can’t be shipped.”

The slowdown has meant that the 2 person company has had to put in long hours to compensate for the loss in business.

The company normally deals with growers who make a sale to a client overseas and then require their product be shipped in a refrigerated container via truck, transferred to the port, loaded on a ship and sent to the buyer.

“We’re going to have a down season because a lot of this stuff you can’t make up. By the time things would recover assuming there’s a settlement at some near date, the market demand for the apples, because it is a seasonal demand, would not extend to make up for the lost volume.”

Once the season has past, the demand for apples and other fruit begins to shift to southern hemisphere grown product. This means a lot fruit in storage will simply have to be dealt with by the growers in some fashion either selling it for juice or other purposes.

Alderson said he expects the dispute to come to some kind of conclusion in the next week or so. He sees several potential outcomes. “The union will either go on strike, management will lock them out or they will settle. In either of the first two cases it’s possible that President Obama could invoke the Taft-Hartley Act which forces the parties back to work and brings in a federal mediator to resolve the issues. That happened the last time in 2002 when a port work stoppage lasted ten days. Right now, since there is no contract in place, Taft Hartley can’t be invoked.

He’s happy that the story is dominating the media because it means pressure on both sides to resolve the issues. It’s getting both local and national attention with members of congress meeting to attempt to bring things to closure.

For Emerald Maritime it’s not disastrous but it’s not a happy circumstance.

“I don’t think we will come up in the red at the end of our fiscal year,” said Alderson, “but I’m pretty certain we won’t have our best year, in fact we will probably have one of our lowest revenue years in the past five to eight years.”