Today’s Columbian reports on NLRB charges from both the ILWU and Mitsui-United Grain, and for the first time, the employer has admitted that it’s displacing local union workers with replacement workers during the lockout. Excerpts from the Columbian:

Pat McCormick, spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers Association, which represents United Grain and other grain exporters in the nine-week-old standoff with the ILWU, acknowledged Thursday that the company is using replacement workers.

In a statement to The Columbian Thursday, Jennifer Sargent, spokeswoman for the ILWU, said United Grain “attorneys and public relations contractors are making accusations about local workers to distract the public from what’s really at stake in this fight.

She went on: “The bottom line is that Japan-based Mitsui” — a reference to the parent owner of United Grain, Mitsui & Co. Ltd., a global trading company headquartered in Tokyo — “is profiting from America’s public ports and labor, and trying to squeeze concessions from workers at a time when our community needs more good jobs.”

Read the rest of the article, including NLRB charges, at the Columbian