ILWU Local 4's president and hundreds of other union members and community supporters have risen up to support Local 21's fight to maintain jurisdiction at the Port of Longview, WA. July 11 photo showing 100 longshore workers inside EGT's gate from the Daily News.
The biggest labor dispute in Washington state — spawning one of the more militant union campaigns in decades — is happening right now in Longview. About 100 union members were cited and arrested earlier this week, and yesterday hundreds more crowded onto railroad tracks to block a mile-long train.
Here’s what’s going on.
EGT Development, a joint venture of Japan-based Itochu Corp, South Korea’s STX Pan Ocean and St. Louis-based Bunge North America, is using non-union labor to handle grain in the testing phase of its new $200 million facility at the Port of Longview. All other grain export terminals from the Columbia River to the Puget Sound have successfully and profitably worked with unionized labor for decades.
Talks between EGT executives and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 21, which has a contract for all longshore work on Port property, about becoming signatory to the area standard contract broke down months ago and the company has refused to return to the table. Instead, EGT has sued the Port in federal court, arguing that the company was not bound by the contract with Local 21 to hire union labor on its leased site. The company claims that keeping the facility’s 50 full-time workers non-union will save EGT $1 million a year.
Now, after months of picketing and attempts to pressure EGT to return to the table, the ILWU members are angry.
Dan Coffman, President of ILWU Local 21, stood with other longshore workers as they waited to be loaded into Cowlitz County Corrections vans on July 11, 2011.
“We are going to fight for our jobs in our jurisdiction. We have worked this dock for 70 years, and to have a big, rich corporation come in and say, ‘We don’t want you,’ is a problem,” ILWU 21 President Dan Coffman told the (Longview) Daily News. “We’re all together. We’re all going to jail as a union.”
And go to jail they did. At a July 11 protest, members tore down a chain-link gate and stormed the EGT grain terminal. About 100 union dock workers, including union leaders, were cited and arrested. It was the latest of four large-scale demonstrations the ILWU has held in the last two months. On June 3, more than 1,000 ILWU supporters from Washington to California rallied outside EGT’s headquarters in downtown Portland. The protests have all been loud, but nonviolent.
Yesterday (July 14), hundreds of union dock workers crowded onto railroad tracks to block a train from delivering grain to the EGT terminal. The Daily News reports that the 107-car train was rerouted to Vancouver following the standoff, which prompted Burlington Northern Santa Fe to indefinitely suspend train traffic to the grain terminal for safety reasons.
“Union longshore workers have made the Northwest one of the most productive grain exporting regions in the world,” Coffman said. “This new grain terminal stands to gain by playing by the same rules as the other grain operators that are making lots of money with productive union workers.”