Today's Teamster News 09.25.11

80 Arrested as Financial District Protest Moves North  New York Times   ...The police made scores of arrests on Saturday as hundreds of people, many of whom had been encamped in the financial district as part of a lengthy protest, marched north to Union Square...
Unions Breathe Easier After GOP Assault On NLRB Fails  Talking Points Memo   ...The AFL-CIO and organized labor in general is breathing a sigh of relief after the Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly defeated -- in a tie vote Wednesday night -- an effort to gut the National Labor Relations Board and prevent it from filing suits against companies that move operations to right-to-work states...
Natural Gas Gold Rush, Utica Shale Edition Courtesy of John Kasich  DeSmogBlog   ...the Ohio Governor's 21st Century and Economic Summit began, hosted by the controversial union-busting Governor John Kasich (R-OH), coming on the heels of an oil and natural gas funded study claiming that claimed, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer put it, "Ohio's natural gas and oil reserves are a multibillion-dollar bonanza that could create more than 204,500 jobs..."
“Walkergate” Player’s Link to Privatization point to Scott Walker agenda as County Exec, Governor  Badger Democracy   ...All ... share Scott Walker’s passion for privatization and de-regulation – first for Milwaukee County, then for the State of Wisconsin...
Gov. Rick Scott Brags About Laying Off 15,000 Government Workers After Decrying Florida’s High Unemployment  ThinkProgress   ...Scott’s reminder that he laid of thousands of Floridians drew big applause from the conservative crowd...
ILWU Ladies Auxiliary protests alleged police brutality  The Daily News   ...About 50 women, most of them members of the International Warehouse and Longshore Union's Ladies Auxiliary, staged a protest in West Kelso Saturday afternoon, alleging their members were brutalized by police during a protest at the EGT grain terminal Wednesday...

WA longshoremen keep right to picket

Longshore Shipping News tells us a judge today denied EGT's attempt to take away the Washington Longshoremen's right to picket:

Leal Sundet, Coast Committeeman for the ILWU Coast Longshore Division, said

Union members are pleased with the outcome even though they are smarting from false allegations of hostage-taking that were spread in the media throughout the day, an outright lie intended to discredit the union and its struggle for good jobs for the community...

EGT has employed a professional strike breaker and a labor provocateur to manufacture trouble during peaceful protest, but they can’t change the fact that longshore workers are simply wanting to go to work and do their jobs.

The Stand provides a good summary of what they're mad about:

...a taxpayer-subsidized international conglomerate, which is operating on public property, is suing the public so it can avoid paying the area’s standard wages and undercut its competitors that do. Then, it exacerbated tensions with the local labor community by importing union workers from another jurisdiction to cross the picket lines.

Longshoremen back to work in WA (video)

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.

Whoa! Longshoremen mount wildcat strike in Seattle

Longshoremen in Seattle and Tacoma struck the ports after their union brothers and sisters stormed the Port of Longview, blocked a train and dumped grain.

KOMO News has the story:

Hundreds of Longshore workers stormed the Port of Longview, overpowered security guards, damaged rail cars and dumped grain at the center of a labor dispute that has spread to Seattle and Tacoma ports, officials said Thursday.

Six guards were detained for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

No one was hurt, and nobody has been arrested. Most of the protesters returned to their union hall after cutting brake lines and spilling grain from car at the EGT terminal, he said.

Read the whole thing here.

WA longshoremen: ‘We’re all going to jail as a union’

West Coast longshoremen may be in the fight of their lives. Their foe is a grain terminal that's partly owned by a South Korean shipping company. The grain terminal owner wants to bust the union, ILWU Local 21. What's more disturbing is that Congress is now considering a trade deal with South Korea that would further embolden South Korean companies to break our laws.

According to Public Citizen, the proposed South Korean trade deal,

...includes extraordinary foreign investor rights and their private “investor-state” enforcement – in which a foreign corporation is empowered to directly challenge U.S. laws as trade pact violations before foreign tribunals to demand compensation. 

But back to the longshoremen.

On Friday, their protest shut down the grain terminal. One person was arrested.
You'll recall that a week ago Thursday the longshoremen turned back a BNSF grain train at the Port of Longview in the third major protest that week. The previous Monday, 100 union members were arrested for tearing down a fence.

The target of the longshoremen's ire is EGT, which is owned by three other companies: St. Louis-based Bunge North America, Japan-based Itochu Corp. and Korean shipper Pan Ocean STX.

Scott Mason, president of Tacoma-based ILWU Local 23, said,

EGT would like to be the Walmart of the grain business and force everyone else into their agenda.

Three years ago, port commissioners (backed by the longshoremen) took 6 acres from a locally owned company at the port and leased to EGT Development, which planned to build a $200 million grain elevator. The longshoremen supported the taking of the land by eminent domain because the new grain facility would create 50 jobs.

The Salem-News reports,

EGT imported nonunion construction workers from out-of-state to do most of the work. It now wants to operate the facility with nonunion, out-of-state labor.

Members of ILWU are employed at port grain export terminals coastwise under the Northwest Grainhandlers Agreement, which is set to expire later this year. The union believes if EGT is operating without a contract it will reverberate in upcoming negotiations.

EGT sued the port in January in federal court, claiming they’re not bound by the contract to hire union labor.

The local paper says labor leaders on the West Coast are watching the standoff carefully, fearful that a victory by the grain elevator company will embolden grain companies at other ports to challenge the union.

Now EGT is trying to divide and conquer. It just announced it will hire the operating engineers for 25-35 jobs at the facility.

Reports The Daily News,

The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701, based in Gladstone, Ore., agreed to work for General Construction and take the 25 to 35 jobs at the terminal.

Friday morning, union picketers held signs stating "ILWU Jurisdiction" and "701 Scabs" while walking back and forth on port-owned property on East Mill Road outside the EGT gates. A 20-foot-tall, inflatable cartoon rat stood at the tent.

Here's what ILWU Local 21 President Dan Coffman had to say:

We are going to fight for our jobs in our jurisdiction. We have worked this dock for 70 years, and to have a big, rich corporation come in and say, ‘We don’t want you,’ is a problem. We’re all together. We’re all going to jail as a union.

Solidarity.

Whoa! Hundreds of longshoremen block train in WA

The Associated Press has the story about the longshoremen's third major protest in a week in Washington:

Hundreds of union workers managed to block a mile-long train from delivering grain to the new EGT terminal at the Port of Longview, Wash. The terminal wants to use non-union labor.

The train was rerouted to Vancouver after the Thursday morning standoff. Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad spokesman Gus Melonas says the blockade has prompted BNSF to indefinitely suspend train traffic to the grain terminal.

A hundred (UPDATE: just added dropped word "hundred") longshoremen were arrested on Monday after they pulled down a chain link fence on the railroad's property, according to The Daily News.

Teamsters and longshoremen have a lot at stake in this new global order. Multinationals are just dying to reduce all their workers along the supply chain to serfdom. The grain train standoff, the fight over Mexican trucks, the battle with Royal Ahold and C & S Wholesale Grocers, the dispute with BMW -- they're all part and parcel of the same savage attack on workers.

If you haven't gotten educated and involved yet, better hurry up. They're coming after you soon, if they haven't already.