High winds late Tuesday and early Wednesday forced container crane shutdowns because of dangerous conditions while those same gusty winds toppled dozens of empty shipping containers from their stacks at terminals across the Tacoma Tideflats.

Work crews were laboring Wednesday to restack and secure undamaged metal containers, some 40 feet long, and to cull out those bent by their falls from the stacks of containers.

“We had containers blown over throughout the port,” said Port of Tacoma spokeswoman Tara Mattina. The number of affected containers wasn’t large considering the volume of shipping containers being held at the port’s terminals, but most terminals saw at least a few containers picked up and moved by the high winds.

Meanwhile, the working pace at port terminals remained below the norm as Longshore union workers allegedly cut their speed to pressure their employers to enhance their offers at the contract bargaining table. The union denied engineering a slowdown, but an employers group, the Pacific Maritime Association, claimed that productivity was down by as much as 60 percent.

The International Longshore Workers Union and the PMA, which speaks for terminal operators and shipping lines on the West Coast, have been meeting for six months trying to create a new long-term labor contract. The two have settled their differences over the PMA’s ample medical plan but reportedly have made little progress toward resolution on issues such as wages, jurisdiction and automation.

According to outside observers, that production pace has picked up over the pace of last week, but it still doesn’t match the customary working speed. Unlike last week, the employers aren’t sending longshore work gangs home when productivity lags. Rather, this week they are adding additional gangs to double up the dockside activity.

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