Port commissioners will vote Wednesday on an incentive plan in which Hanjin and other shipping lines would receive $20 per container moved through Portland up to a certain threshold. Carriers would get an added $25 payment for each increase in the number of containers they transported.
Asked about the latest incentive plan, Jennifer Sargent, an ILWU spokeswoman, issued a statement Friday accusing ICTSI of badly managing the terminal and unfairly blaming longshore workers. She said ICTSI was blackmailing Portland’s stakeholders for profits, presumably threatening to punish customers and others if they refused to accede to the terminal operator’s demands.
“It’s blackmailing the carriers in rate negotiations, blackmailing the shippers who fear losing container service and blackmailing the Port into subsidizing its mismanagement,” Sargent wrote of ICTSI. “It’s shameful that the Port is spending $7 for every man, woman and child in Portland to enable the mismanagement of ICTSI — a corporation whose CEO, Enrique Razon, enjoys a personal wealth of $4.5 billion.”
Sargent also released a letter that officials of ILWU Portland locals 8 and 40 sent Jan. 23 to an ICTSI manager. They wrote that freight was backing up at North Portland’s Terminal 6 because of inoperable vehicles used to move containers. The implication was that equipment shortages, not labor slowdowns, were lowering productivity on the docks.
