Mercifully, the Port of Vancouver has been on the sidelines in the battle between West Coast port operators and the Longshore union that has turned increasingly nasty in recent weeks. The port’s union dockworkers, having endured an 18-month lockout at the United Grain Terminal before reaching a contract deal in August, aren’t in this fight affecting their union siblings at container-handling ports. Surely they’re relieved that it’s somebody else’s turn on the front lines.
But the local union members and the rest of us in Clark County cannot escape the fallout that’s already coming from Hanjin Shipping’s decision to scrap its container ship service to Portland’s Terminal 6. It’s bad news for the union, blamed by many for work slowdowns that Hanjin says were a key factor in its decision, that is certain to lose local jobs. It’s a headache for trucking companies and others in the freight industry, who now need to send and deliver goods through Puget Sound ports. And it’s misery for all types of businesses that will have to wait longer and pay more for shipped goods, and for consumers who ultimately will swallow those extra costs.
Hanjin handled close to 80 percent of the container traffic at Portland’s Terminal 6. It had complained about declining worker productivity at the terminal following a dispute between two unions in May 2012 over a small number of jobs, and the Port of Portland responded with $11 million in rebates and incentives to keep them coming. But Dennis Weissenfluh, owner of a 13-truck Vancouver firm called Phase II Transportation, says the Hanjin ships started bypassing the Port of Portland several weeks ago. So Hanjin’s notice to the port and its customers that it will cease direct service to Portland on March 9 wasn’t much of a surprise.
Weissenfluh says his truckers won’t miss the long lines outside Terminal 6, which often would evaporate around closing time as the pace of work inexplicably quickened. But those waits have been replaced by road trips and heavy truck congestion at Seattle’s Terminal 46, now the point of delivery and departure for containers that used to move through Portland. Weissenfluh says he’s been forced to impose a surcharge for the added transportation costs to frustrated customers.
