A bitter labour dispute on Northwest docks escalated on Saturday as Columbia Grain Inc. locked out Portland longshore workers, accusing them of obstructing exports by ‘gaming the system’.
The lockout, which began at 6am at Columbia’s Port of Portland grain elevator, compounds a similar action at United Grain Corp. in Vancouver, where dockworkers have been shut out since Feb. 27.
Columbia Grain accused members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union of slowing operations at its terminal, where wheat, corn, soybeans and other US commodities arrive by train and barge for loading on ships bound for Asia and beyond.
On Saturday the company, owned by Japan’s Marubeni Corp., employed managers and temporary workers as scabs to load a vessel as union members picketed outside.
‘With bargaining stalled and the longshore workers engaging in ‘inside game’ tactics, including slowdowns, work-to-rule, and demands for repeated inspections of the same equipment – all designed to negatively impact Columbia Grain’s operations – we have decided that a lockout is our best alternative,’ the company said in a written statement.
Columbia Grain and United Grain are members of a bargaining group pushing the longshore union for concessions to match employer-friendly working conditions at competing terminals in Longview and Kalama, Wash.
Members of the employers Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers Association claim that ‘union perks, featherbedding and foot-dragging’ cost millions of dollars a year in a low-margin business, threatening the survival of their terminals.
In contrast, longshore union leaders describe the companies as highly profitable, foreign-owned ventures trying to squeeze local workers.
Bruce Holte, president of ILWU Local 8, said Columbia Grain hired replacement workers last autumn, when contract talks were in early stages, showing that the company never intended to reach agreement.
‘Unfortunately, Marubeni-Columbia Grain has done what it’s wanted to do all along, and locked out local workers who have made this company profitable for decades,’ Holte said in a written statement.
‘Rather than reach a fair agreement, the company has hired an out-of-state strike-breaking firm, attorneys and a publicist to make allegations against local workers who simply want to do our jobs and support our community.’
More than 50 protesters picketed last Saturday at the Port of Portland, where Portland police officers stood by along with security guards contracted by the Port and others hired by Columbia Grain.
Adding to the conflict, Port of Portland security guards represented by the longshore union accused the Port of improperly displacing them.
‘We have filed a grievance and are seeking comparable hours to what the Port is paying its contracted security,’ said David Vale, steward for the ILWU Local 28 security officers, in an e-mail.
‘That could eventually amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of which is taxpayer provided.’
A contract expired Sept. 30 between the union and the grain handlers, a negotiating group that includes Columbia Grain, United Grain and Louis Dreyfus Commodities.
The terminal operators declared an impasse late last year and imposed terms of a final contract offer that union members had rejected in a vote.
But Temco, another member of the negotiating group, defected from the association and reached its own tentative contract with the union.
In Vancouver, United Grain has continued operating during its lockout, using managers and non-union labour.
Columbia Grain used a similar approach Saturday, as managers and temporary workers loaded grain into the Yu Hong, an 82,000-ton Panama-flagged bulk carrier.
• Meanwhile the AFL-CIO has said that April’s US employment numbers which showed a gain of 165,000 jobs added to payroll are misleading.
The problem is that in February 2010 only 59.9% of young adults reported being employed, starkly contrasting with the late 1970s, late 1980s and 1990s when the share of young adults working was in the 70% range.
The gain of 165,000 jobs are preliminary numbers, as the report also shows that the numbers for February and March have now been adjusted upward.
A separate survey was also was released, based on a survey of households, from which we learned that the overall unemployment rate edged slightly down to 7.5%.
The two surveys – one of employers’ payroll reports, the Current Employment Survey (CES); the other, the Current Population Survey (CPS) – are not perfectly comparable.
They are related and may report a different trend, since one is asking household members and the other is looking at employer administrative data.
But here is one way to look at them.
Since February 2010, when we started a string of consecutive positive payroll reports, the CES has reported adding over 6 million jobs to America’s payrolls.
During that time, the household survey, the CPS, shows that among those aged 20 to 24, an additional 1,020,000 young adults reported having a paid job.
The household survey also shows that since February, the population of those 20 to 24 has increased by 1,090,000 young adults. A virtual wash.
Averaging the payroll additions since this long string of job gains began gives us 157,000 added to payrolls each month.
But that translates into a stalemate with the growth of the number of young adults and the share of new jobs they are gaining.
The problem is that in February 2010 only 59.9% of young adults reported being employed.
Those are levels reminiscent of the early 1960s, when women in that age group had much lower labour force participation.
It is in stark contrast to the late 1970s, late 1980s and 1990s when the share of young adults working was in the 70% range.
The experience of young adults in the labour market is critical to their future earnings success.
They should be building up the necessary job skills and networks to advance in the labour market.
They should be primed for taking off in their 30s to successful careers.
But, it also is crucial to our economy to have a cohort of primed, skilled and work experienced workers ready to fill-in as older workers transition to retirement.
Clearly, a pace of job growth of near 160,000 jobs is not fast enough to get young adults out of their employment rut.
‘We have been distracted from their plight – from our plight – of the deep dimensions of this job crisis because we have politicians still arguing about the role of government as if in a 1980s time warp.
Those who currently turned 20 were born 12 years after Ronald Reagan declared, ‘Government is the problem;’ they were not in kindergarten when President Bill Clinton ‘ended welfare as we know it, said the AFL-CIO.
‘What they have seen government do is to bail out fat-cats on Wall Street who bet wrong on a housing bubble they created, rush to end the effects of sequestration on Congress’ ability to fly home for district days but leave in place cuts for Head Start so that young poor working mothers would not have access to high quality child care for their children, pass favoured nation trade legislation to usher in a flood of imports from China and be silent when a plant in West, Texas, blew up, killing 14 people.
‘To them, the government is on the side of the rich. To them, Congress is hypocritical.
‘Republicans ran up deficits when it was caused by tax cuts for the wealthy but stymies the discussion of jobs for young people if it means running a deficit.
‘Fifty years ago we treated the young with indifference in sending them off to fight in Vietnam.
‘Today, we treat them with indifference when we fail to have a government that will discuss getting young adults jobs and instead leave them a bleak future.
‘Are we just reliving the failure of ideologies of old men enamoured with their fetishes, blinded to the reality of their children?’