|
As Port of Portland officials plan how to handle a lockout of or strike by longshore workers at the port, Portland longshore workers declined to work on Friday or Monday due to grievances over terminal actions, and employers temporarily suspended weekend dockworker shifts at 29 West Coast ports.
By the end of day Monday, Portland’s Terminal 6 will have been effectively closed for business for four days.
A shutdown would be particularly costly in the Portland area, where approximately one-fifth of the region's economy is generated by exports, according to a 2012 study by the Brookings Institution.
On Friday, the Hanjin Copenhagen container ship sat at Portland's Terminal, but longshore workers were not loading or unloading cargo from the vessel. The union local informed ICTSI Oregon, which operates Terminal 6, it wouldn't work Friday or Monday because it was demonstrating a grievance over several recent incidents at the terminal, according to an ICTSI spokesman. He said the notification came a little more than an hour before the workers' shift was scheduled to start.
"The ILWU again utilized the incidents of January 29, January 30 and February 2, 2015, when its members were released due to woefully low productivity, as the excuse for engaging in the current work stoppage," said ICTSI Oregon chief executive Elvis Ganda in a statement.
|
Photo credit: Mark Graves/The Oregonian
Terminal employers on the West Coast temporarily canceled weekend dockworker shifts on Friday, according to a statement from the Pacific Maritime Association.
According to Josh Thomas, a spokesman for the Port of Portland, some port tenants don't use dockworker labor and aren't involved in the West Coast port contract negotiations, port security officials are discussing how to operate and staff "neutral gates" where these tenants could enter and exit their facilities.
Thomas said the port's security force is prepared to work with the Portland Police Bureau to oversee activities at the neutral and contested gates.
For more of The Oregonian stories: www.oregonlive.com
www.oregonlive.com
|
