Today is Samoa News’ last printed publication for this week — maybe. It will depend on how early Samoa News is able to get supplies in from the U.S. mainland. We are currently looking to have the print edition again next week Monday. This is due to the slowdown by West Coast dockworkers.

Our supplies were held back to make room for companies that bring in full containers, not loose cargo. Our order was to be on yesterday’s cargo ship that was delayed twice, and we were not notified that our cargo was not onboard until the vessel arrived and a search for our cargo commenced.

Our order is being ‘air freighted’ in, but that means we are now at the mercy of the first available cargo space or flight, with our shipment slated for Thursday, Friday or even Saturday — depending on the cargo plane’s schedule. In the meantime, Hawaiian Air no longer has a Wednesday flight, so its next flight into the territory is this Friday, and it will again depend on space available.

Samoa News published a story yesterday about local stores, as well as the canneries being affected by the West Coast strike — with food shortages, as well as general supply shortages, i.e. Tri Marine has delayed the opening of its new cannery plant awaiting equipment to arrive, while Cost-U-Less was said to have at least 20 containers arrive on yesterday’s vessel — but that’s just some of their order Samoa News was told, more is expected as U.S. vessels continue to arrive.

In the meantime, Samoa News will continue to publish its online edition at samoanews.com where you’ll find all the latest local news that you would expect to find in the print edition. Beginning Wednesday and for the days we are unable to print, you may access the pdf of the print edition on the website for free — look for the headline that says, “Download today’s Samoa News print edition here”.  If you’ve never read our print edition online, try it — you’ll like it.

Breaking news, as well as the latest Flag Day Cricket news and photos can be found on both our website and Facebook page: facebook.com/samoanewsamericansamoa

The latest news from the negotiators working on a new contract for West Coast dockworkers came last week when they agreed on what had been a major roadblock to an agreement — who maintains and repairs the truck beds used to move containers.

Part of the importance of the agreement on who works on the chassis is that the Union blames a lot of the backup at the docks on poor maintenance of the trucks moving containers after the ship owners sold off their trucks and are now contracting with outside vendors, while of course the owners are blaming it all on the unions not providing the top notch workers, rather using newbies.

Not a key topic originally, chassis repair became a big stumbling block because automation at seaports is expected to take jobs — and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union wants to find new members where it can, and an agreement in favor of ILWU would allow the union to control the jobs.

The current contract expired on June 30, 2014 and as industry leaders predicted at the time, this labor dispute is having a significant impact on global trade as well as the American economy.

Pacific Maritime Association operates ports in California, Oregon and Washington that clear 68 per cent of all container shipments into and out of the U.S. The ILWU represents 13,600 dockworkers on the West Coast.

We look forward to printing a newspaper again — ASAP — and apologize to our readers for the inconvenience.