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When it comes to removing the bottleneck plaguing the West Coast ports, Representative Dan Newhouse, chair of the Western Caucus, says there’s unfortunately no improvement to report.

“All of the factors that have contributed to the slowdown and the backup of containers and ships of trucks of rail all of those things are still in place, and on some levels even getting worse with the policies of mandated vaccines and the potential of losing some of the critical employees within the supply chain due to the Administration’s Executive Orders.”

Newhouse added there could be reason for optimism as negotiations for many of the labor contracts for workers at those ports should start soon, because of the expiration of current contacts. Newhouse said he’s hopeful real solutions will come from those negotiations.

“You know, we’d love to be able to see extended works, hour periods, a 24/7 kind of harvest season focus on getting our ports alleviated of the extra traffic would be helpful at this point.”

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