The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports:
Longshoremen returned to work in Seattle and Tacoma on Friday morning, ending a one-day walkout that closed the ports in both cities.
The closure followed on an incident in Longview, where hundreds of International Longshore and Warehouse Union members storm a grain terminal Thursday morning.
Longshoremen in Longview have had a long and bitter dispute about whether they should be doing the work at the grain terminal.
A federal judge on Thursday issued an injunction against the union's tactics in Longview and warned union members not to violate the order.gatekeeper1950 has an excellent history of the year-long dispute here. He tells us what happened yesterday:
The confrontation between West Coast longshore workers and an anti-union exporter exploded as pickets massed on railroad tracks by the hundreds yesterday to block grain shipments.Police used clubs and pepper spray on protesters in Longview, Washington, as they made 19 arrests.Early this morning a terminal there was invaded and hoppers holding about 10,000 tons of grain were opened onto railroad tracks.Ports in Washington shut down completely Thursday as hundreds of longshore workers rushed to Longview, in the state’s southwestern corner.Bill Proctor, a Longshore Union (ILWU) retiree, was with fellow retirees and active workers on an early morning picket line at a Seattle grain terminal. He said, “If that facility is allowed to go non-ILWU, other facilities will be tempted to follow suit. And the grain terminals on the coast are all going into contract bargaining next month.”A foreman came out to politely assure the picketers that no one would do their work.
EGT Development, a consortium of three companies, wants to operate its new $200 million grain terminal in Longview using non-ILWU labor, despite a contract with the port requiring it to do so. When the ILWU protested, the company signed up with an Operating Engineers local.
Every other major grain terminal on the West Coast is operated by ILWU labor, and the union asserts that EGT’s goal is to go non-union altogether, ending generations of good jobs.Here's the caption to the video above:
August 29, 2011: This disturbing video shows an unidentified driver plowing a large vehicle through a nonviolent worker demonstration at the EGT grain facility at the Port of Longview, Washington. The car appears to speed up as it strikes two of the workers. One of the workers is pushed several feet as the car continues moving, and the driver doesn't slow down or render aid. The driver of the vehicle has not been arrested for assaulting the workers, for failing to render aid or for leaving the scene of an accident.And here's some context for the assault on workers at other parts of Sea-Tac, thanks to Teamsters Local 117.
Instead of generating good, family-wage jobs for our region, the Port has allowed too many companies that do business at the airport and the seaport to pollute our environment and take advantage of workers...
Many airport workers are simply unable to make ends meet. These baggage handlers, skycaps, concession workers, janitors, and wheelchair pushers struggle to support their families by working multiple jobs with poverty wages, no health care, and in a hostile work environment. At the seaport, independent truck drivers work for near minimum wage delivering the goods that drive our economy.Read the whole thing here.
