Press reports and editorials have heaped scorn on the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Longview for aggressively picketing and protesting EGT Development’s effort to undermine working conditions and wages in the West Coast grain-handling industry. The silence is deafening concerning the destruction done by global corporations to force wages to Third World levels. EGT is a creation of Bunge North America, Japan-based Itochu Corporation and Korean STX Pan Ocean Company. The leader in this group, Bunge Ltd., is a huge international agribusiness food company that reported $47.7 billion in revenues in 2010 and $2.3 billion in after-tax income.
When the ILWU refused to consent to a long list of concessions, like 12-hour shifts at straight-time pay, that were less than conditions already agreed to by other West Coast grain-handling companies, EGT shopped for an outside contractor to deny ILWU members the work. So, a global company, behind the veil of the joint venture, has made it appear as though the Longview dispute is between two unions. It runs far deeper than that and has all the hallmarks of a transnational corporation leveraging high unemployment to ratchet U.S. wages and working conditions downward.
Denny Scott
Brush Prairie
