OREGON's Portland dockers staged a one-day shutdown of the city's only container terminal this week because the terminal operator fired a number of longshoremen for deliberate slowdowns, reported Newark's Journal of Commerce.
Elvis Ganda, North American CEO of Manila's International Container Terminal Services Inc (ICTSI), said the dockers union refused to dispatch men from 7am to 7pm, and as there was no night work, the entire day was lost.
Last week crane productivity from the men of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 8 at Portland's Terminal 6 dropped below 10 container moves per crane per hour, a 66 per cent drop from the average performance. So ICTSI fired the men.
While disputes are common on the US west coast in the current protracted contract talks, the ILWU and ICTSI have been trading blows in Portland since 2012 when a jurisdictional dispute between the dockers and the electricians unions arose over which union would plug and unplug reefer boxes.
Accused of deliberate slowdowns in Portland, the ILWU maintains that defective equipment is the real cause. The union as been charged with deliberate go slows up and down the US west coast for months with the ILWU citing other reason - the lack of chassis in LA-Long Beach, for instance.
The employers bargaining unit, the Pacific Maritime Association, of which ICTSI is a member, said productivity at west coast ports has dropped sharply. In Oakland, average crane moves per hour have dropped from 32.1 per hour in October to 23.9 in January - 26.1 per cent below the historic average.
In Seattle, average crane moves per hour have dropped from 27.4 in October to 19.1 in January, 27.8 per cent below average. In Tacoma, average crane per moves have fallen from 27 in October to 18.4 per hour in January, 26 per cent below the average.
WORLD SHIPPING
29 January 2015 - 18:47
ILWU shuts Portland's container port when terminal boss fires dockers
OREGON's Portland dockers staged a one-day shutdown of the city's only container terminal this week because the terminal operator fired a number of longshoremen for deliberate slowdowns, reported Newark's Journal of Commerce.
WORLD SHIPPING
29 January 2015 - 18:47
ILWU shuts Portland's container port when terminal boss fires dockers
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