Excerpts from today’s Columbian:
The Washington state Department of Agriculture says it will soon stop providing grain inspection services at United Grain Corp.’s facility at the Port of Vancouver unless steps are taken to make it safer for its inspectors to cross picket lines to conduct their work.
The possibility that state agricultural inspectors, charged with protecting U.S. and international grain trade and consumer interests, may discontinue their work at United Grain raises a fresh concern: that the average 3.2 million metric tons of grain that moves through the Port of Vancouver to overseas markets will stop moving.
In her Tuesday statement to The Columbian, ILWU spokesperson Jennifer Sargent said United Grain “brought volatility” to the port “when it locked out generations of local union workers who made the facility profitable and replaced them with non-union replacement workers.” She said the company is failing to take responsibility “for its own provocative moves that have led to unsafe conditions, including hiring an out-of-state strikebreaking firm, bringing scab boats and mercenary security guards into our river, and demanding constant passage of vehicles through human picket lines.”