Container shipping at the Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma is expected to be curtailed Tuesday as port workers protest the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.
Thousands of International Longshore and Warehouse Union members from all major West Coast container shipping ports plan to protest what they see as poor treatment of workers throughout the world as corporate profits are enhanced.
“I’ll be there demonstrating, will you?” Larry Hansen, president of the longshore union’s Local 19, which represents cargo handlers at Port of Seattle terminals, said last week. A work stoppage would halt port activity on the heaviest shipping day of the week in Southern California ports, the nation’s busiest, Bloomberg News reported.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handled millions of import and export shipments of containerized cargo last year.
Three container ships are scheduled to arrive Tuesday at the Port of Seattle, according to the Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, which tracks shipping at Washington state ports.
Two of the container ships are scheduled to arrive Tuesday at the Port of Tacoma.
“The World Trade Organization meeting . . . gives us a rare opportunity to express firsthand our outrage at how workers have been treated across the planet in the profit frenzy of globalization,” union President Brian McWilliams said in a report to union members.
“The ILWU banner will be there (in Seattle). We will not be ignored.”
Officials of the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping lines and terminal operators at West Coast ports, were not available yesterday to comment on the expected port shutdown because of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
Bloomberg and the Journal of Commerce reported that CSX Corp.’s Sea-Land Service unit, which operates at the Port of Tacoma, and other international ocean shipping companies face a one-day shutdown.
