Feed items
Source: AFL-CIO
Source: AFL-CIO
Source: U.S. Labor Against the War
Source: U.S. Labor Against the War
Chilean state-owned mining company Codelco resumed shipments of copper after a port strike blocked exports in the world’s top copper producing nation earlier this month.
Port workers returned to work after reaching a deal to end three weeks of strikes that halted shipments of copper, fruit and wood pulp in the export-dependent nation. The strikes caused serious concerns because Chile produces a third of the world’s copper and its solid economy is built around mineral exports.
About 60,000 metric tons of Codelco’s copper was stuck at port and the company lost more than $500 million since the strike began.
More at ABC News
On Monday, a Coos Bay Rail Link (CBR) train moved a shipment of plywood out of the Roseburg Forest Products mill in Coquille, Ore., marking the full restoration of the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay’s 134-mile Coos Bay line since the route was closed more than five years ago.
Late last month, Billeter Marine and Scott Partney Construction completed the final step of repairing two wooden trestles to open the remaining 20 miles of the line to Coquille. The port purchased the line in 2009 and spent $31 million to rehabilitate the route.
The line’s operator, CBR, launched operations in October 2011 and now serves 11 manufacturers and agricultural producers on the route.
More at Progressive Railroading
Commenting on developments in the Port of Vancouver, Washington, USA, ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) acting general secretary Steve Cotton said:
Steven Cotton, ITFThe lockout of workers by Mitsui-United Grain will soon be entering its tenth week. The company choice of this tactic over honest negotiation has gained them nothing except local and international opprobrium.
The recent spectacle of 12 carloads of police arriving to oversee a peaceful protest outside the Mitsui-owned United Grain Corporation terminal shows how the company’s intransigence is harming the local community – and the company’s reputation. If Mitsui insist on playing with fire they shouldn’t expect the Vancouver police department to have to don asbestos gloves on their behalf.
This situation demands a solution. The company can no longer evade that fact.
For more details of international trade union support for the locked out dockworkers, please see www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1795
ITF news release
Today’s Columbian reports on NLRB charges from both the ILWU and Mitsui-United Grain, and for the first time, the employer has admitted that it’s displacing local union workers with replacement workers during the lockout. Excerpts from the Columbian:
Pat McCormick, spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers Association, which represents United Grain and other grain exporters in the nine-week-old standoff with the ILWU, acknowledged Thursday that the company is using replacement workers.
In a statement to The Columbian Thursday, Jennifer Sargent, spokeswoman for the ILWU, said United Grain “attorneys and public relations contractors are making accusations about local workers to distract the public from what’s really at stake in this fight.
She went on: “The bottom line is that Japan-based Mitsui” — a reference to the parent owner of United Grain, Mitsui & Co. Ltd., a global trading company headquartered in Tokyo — “is profiting from America’s public ports and labor, and trying to squeeze concessions from workers at a time when our community needs more good jobs.”
Read the rest of the article, including NLRB charges, at the Columbian
Please log in to view content
To view the content on this page, please log in to your account.
