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Source: Washington Post
Source: Washington Examiner
Source: Workday MN
Source: The Hill
The ILWU Coast Longshore Division mourns the loss of Manuel “Manny” Stimson, age 78, who worked on the docks for five decades. From the San Jose Mercury News:
A veteran longshoreman died after his after a truck plunged into the bay near the Port of Oakland’s TraPac terminal in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, May 17, 2013. Oakland police held a press conference with union members afterwards. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
Michael Villeggiante, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, right, speaks to the media after a truck plunged into the bay near the Port of Oakland’s TraPac terminal in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, May 17, 2013. Left to right behind him are Sean Farley, president of ILWU Local 34, and other union members Fred Gilliam (91), Ed Henderson (10) and Frank Gaskin (10). To the far right is Oakland Police Spokeswoman Johnna Watson. Despite rescue attempts, a well-loved veteran longshoreman died in the accident.
From an article called ”Israeli government pledges to end ports’ monopoly” in today’s Journal of Commerce:
The Israeli government is planning to issue a tender to build a privately run seaport in the coming months, pledging to end the monopolies of the two main ports of Ashdod and Haifa.The port unions, which comprise 2,400 workers earning double the average public sector salary, are threatening to strike to block the government’s plans [to open a private port to compete with the two state ports].
However, the government is putting together competing plans for how to keep the country’s ports operating in the event dockworkers walk off their jobs to protest.
Israel’s Transportation Ministry has begun exploring the possibility of bringing in foreign labor to stand in for striking workers and has discussed the idea with various overseas companies. Meanwhile, Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economics and trade minister, has raised the idea of bringing in Israel Defense Forces troops to operate the ports.
More at the Journal of Commerce
The longest strike in Hong Kong’s history caused a “huge” drop of almost 11 per cent in container volume at the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals last month.
Port operator Hongkong International Terminals – the target of the dock workers’ 40-day strike which ended after they accepted a 9.8 per cent pay rise said its operations had returned to normal.
But Dr Paul Tsui Hon-yan, chairman of the Association of Freight Forwarding & Logistics, said last month’s drop was huge and that many shippers had chosen to use the Shenzhen port instead.
He said the drop had a knock-on effect across all terminals, contributing to a 12 per cent fall overall.
The strike started on March 28 and ended on Monday last week.
Preliminary figures from the Port Development Council yesterday showed that April throughput at the Kwai Tsing terminals was 1.334 million teu (20-foot equivalent units), down 10.7 per cent compared to the same period last year.
“The drop is a result of the strike. It was not a seasonal drop,” Tsui said.
“We don’t usually see a double-digit drop. The last time it happened would have been in 2009 during the financial tsunami,” he added....
Source: U.S. Labor Against the War
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