ILWU Local 19 pickets Seattle Tunnel Partners’ failure to abide by their written agreement to hire longshore workers for tunnel-related waterfront jobs. KREM photo.
Excerpts from the Seattle Times:
While protest signs have been removed, and the massive drill Bertha can resume its 14-month dig from Sodo to South Lake Union, the longshore workers vow to continue the fight for a handful of tunnel-related jobs.
Gov. Jay Inslee said, “We, six and a half million Washingtonians, are owed something by a business here. There is a private business that owes us the fulfillment of that contract. And we intend to be rigorous in insisting that that private business fulfill its end of the bargain, and that includes being able to have some labor relationship that does not end up with this kind of a slowdown.”
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) could resume picketing if a solution isn’t reached during talks expected to resume in a few days. Inslee thanked the ILWU for a show of “good faith.”
Cam Williams, president of ILWU Local 19 in Seattle, said union members were willing to stop picketing because of optimism that the governor’s involvement would lead to a favorable solution.
The ILWU recently left the AFL-CIO, in part because of what it considers a pattern of incursions by other unions.