By Molly Parker
mparker@scbiznews.com
Published Jan. 16, 2009
Retired port executive Ron Brinson said the Charleston maritime community should take the rapt attention that Maersk’s decision to leave has thrust on the port and turn it into a better understanding of the industry.
“The public does not understand and does not appreciate the value of the port,” Brinson said Thursday to a crowded room at the Charleston Motor Carriers Association’s monthly luncheon at the Sheraton in North Charleston.
Because of that misunderstanding, Brinson said, “we have a port that has been competing with one hand tied behind its back.”
Brinson, now living in Charleston, retired from the business in 2003 after more than 15 years as president and CEO of the Port of New Orleans. A former newspaper editor and reporter in Charleston, Brinson also worked for the S.C. State Ports Authority before leaving for Louisiana.
Much of Brinson’s talk focused on the fallout caused by Maersk Line’s announcement that it would begin pulling services out of Charleston early this year and completely leave town when its contract expires at the end of 2010.
Although the Danish company’s business is extremely important to Charleston and the entire state, the community should not take the news personally, Brinson said.
“These are unemotional business decisions that we sometimes tend to make emotional,” Brinson said.
Charleston, he noted, isn’t the first community to deal with the loss of Maersk, the world’s largest steamship line and the S.C. State Ports Authority’s largest customer.
In 1999, Maersk left the Port of Long Beach in California because officials there could not or would not agree to concessions the shipping company said it needed.
It took about three years, but Long Beach recovered after losing 25% of its business to competitor Los Angeles.
Brinson also warned the group not to heap blame on the International Longshoremen’s Association. Anti-union sentiment seems to have grown stronger nationally in the wake of Detroit’s struggles, he said, and seems even more intense in Southern states, including South Carolina.
The Maersk decision also compounded those feelings because the company said it was moving because the ILA refused to let the company operate from the common-user yard at the Wando Welch Terminal, a move that would have eliminated several dozen union jobs.
People, especially in South Carolina, tend to perceive unions as a four-letter word, he said. “The reality is that unions are a four-letter word at our port, and that word is F-A-C-T.”
In Charleston, he said, union labor has a good reputation. The SPA has a good reputation also, he said, and offered this advice: “Ease up; give the ports authority a little breathing room.”
He had some advice for port executives as well. Brinson said they should be willing to try new operating models and not wait for changes — potentially misguided changes — to be forced upon the port by the General Assembly and governor.
And he suggested that the entire maritime community, including SPA staff members, spend time “rebooting” relationships with the public. If the state is giving off the perception that it does not support its port operations, steamship lines might take the cue and send their business elsewhere.
“Maybe we South Carolinians are sending the wrong message to the marketplace,” he said.
Reach Molly Parker at 843-849-3144.
