The port has been criticized for how it has addressed airport workers’ unrest while conflicts with labor continues to hurt the shipping terminal.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Unrest among workforces is shaping up to be the Port of Portland’s biggest challenge going forward.
The Portland Business Journal’s Erik Siemers examines how the labor dispute between ICTSI Oregon — the company hired by the port to operate Terminal 6, which recently lost its biggest container company — and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has hurt the port.
Even before it took control of T6, ICTSI expressed its ambition to expand the T6 container business by attracting new carriers to Portland. But thus far, most of those efforts have been stymied by poor labor productivity, he said. [ICTSI CEO Elvis] Ganda said ICTSI has no intention of giving up on its initial goal of growing the Portland container terminal. The company signed a 25-year lease with the Port of Portland.
“We’re plan A and B. The port isn’t letting us out of our lease and we’re not asking out of the lease,” Ganda said. “It is my plan to make Terminal 6 a success, and that includes working with the ILWU.”
The strife is forcing businesses throughout the state to adjust their plans to meet the needs of consumers.
The Bend Bulletin reported on how the negotiation breakdowns have affected companies in the central region of the state:
“We have inventory that will get us through the end of April,” said Jim Miller, sales and marketing director for stand-up paddleboard maker Stand on Liquid, in Bend. “But we’re in a crunch if things get held up through late April.”
U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez flew Tuesday to San Francisco to help resolve the contract dispute. Dockworkers also returned to the job Tuesday after being locked out over the holiday weekend. Employers wanted to avoid paying overtime to workers whom managers accuse of intentional slowdowns, according to The Associated Press. The labor dispute has led to delays in shipments of Oregon pears, reduced sales of Oregon potatoes and increased costs for onion growers, according to Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, who on Thursday called for a swift resolution to the standoff. The shipping slowdown, which began when the dockworkers’ contract expired in July, means delays and added costs for Bend small business Gobi Gear Inc. Like many other businesses, large and small, in Central Oregon, Gobi Gear relies on a factory in China to make a product designed and sold here. Owner Chez Brungraber said she rerouted three pallets of merchandise that left Shanghai on Monday to New Jersey, where she has an employee and a warehouse waiting to receive the shipment.
While the labor negotiations at the shipping terminals has had a widespread impact, employees at the Portland International Airport continue to seethe.
The Port of Portland has been pressed by labor groups to improve wages and working conditions for low-wage workers at PDX and were recently dismayed by managers’ response.
An article published by NW Labor Press expressed frustration with the port’s proposal:
What Port executives came up with — after months of “stakeholder” meetings — was five pages of management-speak, in which the public agency promises next to nothing. The document, presented to the Port of Portland Board of Commissioners Feb. 11, is full of sentences like these: “Integral to ensuring that airport workers, whether employees of the Port of Portland or the many contractors and concessionaire workers at PDX, are safe, healthy and able to sustain high quality work is the vigilant attention to rights and benefits afforded them. To this end the Port will monitor and enhance existing programs as well as chart paths to new benefits not currently in place.”
Say what? You can take a look at the document yourself here. We did our best to boil down the verbiage, and found just two tangible improvements:
- The Port will make it easier for employers to offer subsidized bus passes to workers.
- The Port might make a computer available for workers to search for new jobs.
