Weve had several media inquires regarding Gov. Inslees decision to end the state trooper escorts at the Mitsui-United Grain picket line in Vancouver, WA. Heres our response: Local men and women who were forced out of their longtime jobs by the foreign-owned Mitsui/United Grain more than a year ago are understandably frustrated because their families are suffering. Despite this abuse by a powerful overseas corporation, most workers have been peaceful, and withdrawing the taxpayer-funded police escorts has deescalated the situation. Though the grain companies’ public relations firm likes to pin the blame on local longshore workers, the reality is that state inspectors did not feel safe at the picket lines because of conditions that Mitsui-UGC created, and they are union members themselves who generally do not want to cross picket lines. The use of taxpayer-funded police officers to provide escorts for a private corporation was wrong from the start. ILWU members reached a fair agreement with TEMCO, the American-owned grain exporter in Tacoma, Kalama and Portland, in February of 2013, and TEMCO is now thriving with union members working at those terminals. But unlike TEMCO, the Japanese-owned Mitsui-United Grain and Marubeni-Columbia Grain decided to lock-out ILWU workers more than a year ago, replace them with non-locals, and hired aggressive anti-union security consultants to provoke tension at the gates. The ILWU continues to negotiate with Mitsui-United Grain and Marubeni-Columbia Grain in order to reach a positive resolution. It’s only fair for the Japanese-owned grain terminals to reach an agreement as TEMCO has, so local men and women can get back to work and the outside troublemakers can leave our Columbia River communities as soon as possible. The Governor’s decision to stop providing taxpayer-subsidized public security services to the foreign-owned grain companies was a positive step toward this goal.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 22:58:01 +0000
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