Excerpts from the Portland Business Journal:
Last Monday, the grain shippers presented what its calling its “last, best and final offer to the union,” said spokesman Pat McCormick. That offer expires at midnight Wednesday.
“The ILWU has bargained in good faith and offered several proposals designed to meet the employers’ needs,” Leal Sundet of the ILWU Coast Longshore Division said in the union’s statement. “We want to keep the grain moving as we have done nonstop since the 1930’s. It’s unfortunate that the multinational corporations that are profiting at our ports have failed to accept the workers’ reasonable proposals to reach a fair agreement.”
The ILWU’s membership hasn’t proposed a strike vote, though it remains possible that the impasse could result in a lockout of workers by terminal management.
McCormick on Monday said the grain shippers “have not speculated about what happens in the absence of an agreement.”