Hanjin Shipping officially leaves Port of Portland

Professional Mariner Forum
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Hanjin to leave Portland.

Hanjin Shipping Co. withdrew officially Tuesday from the Port of Portland. Spokesman Josh Thomas confirmed that Hanjin notified port operator ICTSI Oregon and port officials.

Earlier in the day, ICTSI chief executive Elvis Ganda said he was surprised when The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that South Korea-based Hanjin sent its stakeholders a new long-range schedule that showed the March 4 Hanjin Brussels ship as its last to dock in Portland.

Later in the day, a letter to shipping companies that work with Hanjin received aletter saying Portland had been dropped as a stop for container ships. According to the letter, Portland would only be serviced by truck and rail via the Seattle port.

Thomas said Hanjin told the port that the expected last day of service is March 9.

Hanjin ships account for 78 percent of the business at Terminal 6, moving 1,600 containers per week. Those shipments moved most Oregon agricultural exports to Asia, and brought apparel for Northwest-based companies like Nike and Columbia Sportswear in and out of the country.

According to the Port of Portland, that business generated $83 million annually.

Hanjin has not commented yet on reasons for withdrawing.

However, its most recent ship sat for four days waiting to be unloaded while the longshore workers stopped working Friday and Monday to protest their grievance with ICTSI, and the port operator canceled work on Saturday and Sunday, saying the workers weren’t productive enough to justify paying.

Tuesday, longshoremen started unloading the Hanjin vessel at Terminal 6. But that might have been too late to keep Portland’s biggest customer happy.

ICTSI Oregon is part of the Pacific Maritime Association, a coalition with 28 other West Coast port operators who are negotiating a new contract with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The port operators association has accused the dock workers of slowing down work to the point that they are incapacitating normal port activities.

In Portland, the larger contract dispute is layered on years of tension between longshoremen and ICTSI Oregon.

ICTSI and the local longshore workers have been to several arbitration proceedings, where disagreements between the port operator and the union are ironed out. ICTSI officials claim that workers have slowed down activity at the port for years, even before the latest round of contract negotiations.

This caused Hanjin to threaten to leave Portland for good before. Eventually, the Port of Portland decided to pay up to $4 million to incentivize shippers to send containers through Portland in a bid to keep Hanjin’s service. That never sat well with the union, and Hanjin’s executives remained skeptical of conditions improving at the port as recently as March 2014.

Hanjin’s withdrawal could be devastating both to ICTSI Oregon, the first and only U.S. headquarters of the Philippines-based port operating company, and to the longshore workers.

According to the Port of Portland, about 657 jobs are supported by the business brought by Hanjin, paying out $33 million in wages per year. That’s about $225,000 in longshore weekly pay.

Hapag-Lloyd, a German company who comprises about 25 percent of Terminal 6’s business, and Westwood Shipping, who send few ships through Portland, remain as the container terminal’s sole customers.

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Well, poop. Poop, poop, poop. Guess what ILWU just stepped in?

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China could care less about the American middle class or labor rights. It’s instances like this that should remind the general public why a robust merchant fleet is vital to American sovereignty. If the plutocrats had it their way we’d all be serfs.

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who buys the overwhelming majority of their crap then ?

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[QUOTE=Glaug-Eldare;154191]Well, poop. Poop, poop, poop. Guess what ILWU just stepped in?[/QUOTE]

The same pile that the Phillipine owned ICTSI that earned $38 billion last year stepped in. Would it really would have busted their bank to negotiate fairly to keep an $83 million dollar business in Portland?

Don’t blame the union dockworkers, blame your Congress. When American union membership was highest, the spread in incomes between Hoe Boss and the American working man (most housewives didn’t need to work to be able to afford to buy food) was nothing compared to today. Look at a graph of income diversity and you will see that as union membership dropped, the gap climbed in an exact mirror image … more unions, more money for workers, fewer unions, more cash for Joe Boss and his bankers and Joe Sixpack was forced to shop at Walmart.

I hope the dockworkers in Seattle refuse to work Hanjin ships or do it so slowly it makes them long for the good old days in Portland. There are still a couple of American ship operators who can replace Hanjin. The City of Seattle ought to charge them an extra $83 million annually for the pollution and added road traffic they create.

It is another perfect example of Joe Boss’s stupidity and greed. When the morons fire or dump the last American worker who do they think is going to buy their Chinese made crap? With the real loss of American income what choice do 99 percent of Americans have but to buy the cheapest crap they can find?

This another battle lost in a war that most Americans don’t even understand we should be fighting. While the defense contractors get fat by keeping shooting wars going non stop, the likes of John McCain are fighting behind the lines to make sure American workers are the silent casualties.

I hope ICTSI gets sued by Portland and the City takes the docks back and lets an American company run them for Americans.

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I have to say it but I’ve run across a lot of west coast prima donna jerk longshoremen. And that description is a toned down polite version of what I often thought when I was working.

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[QUOTE=Chief Seadog;154209]I have to say it but I’ve run across a lot of west coast prima donna jerk longshoremen. And that description is a toned down polite version of what I often thought when I was working.[/QUOTE]

Absolutely. Those guys are ridiculously under skilled and overpaid compared to mariners. They don’ have to take any STCW or get any licenses, they get to home every night, have great benefits and job security, but they make 50 percent more than we do. That is bullshit.

They are the reason that short sea shipping is uneconomic in the US.

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Don’t get blinded by jealousy. What they make compared to what the banks and foreign owners take out of our economy and your pocket every single hour is not even measurable.

The best thing you can do for Joe Boss is to hate another worker because you think he has too good a deal or too soft a job. They love it when we attack each other rather than the real enemies of the American people. politicians, bankers, and the parasites who feed off them.

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[QUOTE=Steamer;154220]Don’t get blinded by jealousy. What they make compared to what the banks and foreign owners take out of our economy and your pocket every single hour is not even measurable.

The best thing you can do for Joe Boss is to hate another worker because you think he has too good a deal or too soft a job. They love it when we attack each other rather than the real enemies of the American people. politicians, bankers, and the parasites who feed off them.[/QUOTE]

What the eff’ing longshoremen have are two effective unions, one for each coast, that do not underbid each other like the crappy maritime unions do.

There are only so many marine transportation dollars to pay for labor costs. The longshoremen ate getting far too many of those marine transportation dollars, at the expense of mariners.

Short sea shipping, even though it should be the most cost effective method of transporting goods, does not happen in the US because of the high costs imposed by longshoremen. Although trucking is much less efficient, it is cheaper than paying longshoremen to handle cargo going on and off ships. This costs US mariners thousands of good jobs, and we receive lower wages than we should.